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Los Angeles is counting on a significant Canadian presence in its firefighting forces this week as multiple blazes ravage the city, forcing tens of thousands out of their homes. The government of Quebec, in particular, confirmed on Wednesday that its aircraft are currently operating to try to put out the fires in Los Angeles.

A private Canadian company, Coulson Aviation – dedicated to firefighting aircraft – is also participating in emergency efforts, the Canadian Press reported on Wednesday.

The Los Angeles area is experiencing a historically destructive string of fires that began claiming homes in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles on Tuesday. Fires have since been recorded in several other focal points of the city, including Eaton and the Hollywood Hills.

At least five deaths have been confirmed in relation to the fires and some, including the two largest of the fires, were zero percent contained as of Thursday morning. Wind gusts have exacerbated the spread of the fires, as has the prevalence of dry underbrush in forest areas, which the government of California does not regularly remove to prevent fires from growing rapidly. Also hurting firefighting efforts are reports that firefighters are running out of water and do not have sufficient equipment to address the crisis following radical leftist Mayor Karen Bass’s decision to cut the city’s fire budget by nearly $20 million for the current fiscal year.

WATCH — Breitbart News Reports on the Eaton Fire in the Los Angeles Area:

Some reports suggest that New Year’s Eve fireworks may have caused the initial fire, which burned for days and began spreading in part as a result of strong winds picking up days later, but local officials have not confirmed that theory. They have also not at press time offered any other explanation for the fire, focusing instead on urgently responding to it.

Aiding Los Angeles firefighting efforts, the Canadian Press reported, are Canadian CL-415 water-bombing planes out of Quebec. The planes were already in California as a result of a pre-existing agreement in which Quebec loans them out in the fall, after the greatest wildfire threat in Canada subsides.

“California is currently living through difficult times due to the wildfires,” Quebec Public Security Minister Francois Bonnardel said in a statement on social media on Wednesday, vowing that California could “count on the government of Quebec” and its fire agency for support.”

“Two air tankers from the government of Quebec are already on site and the SOPFEU [regional fire agency] will be able to send additional firefighters if California wishes. We are with you!” Bonnardel added.

The Canadian Press also highlighted the efforts of Coulson Aviation, a Canadian firefighting company, which confirmed this week that it had aircraft operating in Los Angeles. Coulson describes itself as a decades-old family company which has engaged in “helicopter logging, forest fire suppression, power-line construction, airliner passenger, transport and many other industrial heavy lift operations.”

Coulson confirmed it was “on the frontlines of the Palisades Fire” on Tuesday.

Los Angeles Fire Department Captain Sheila Kelliher lamented during an interview with Fox News on Wednesday that officials lacked enough water resources to do as much as they hoped to contain the fires – and the devastating winds were hindering aerial efforts.

“This area has got water tanks … these are not made for 15-hour firefights that use — everybody’s using the water. They’re just not designed for that. They’re designed for residential use, not wildland firefighting,” Kelliher explained.

“The other thing that kind of went against us is that we weren’t able to have our air support to help once the winds got too strong, so, a lot of the air support and the water that comes from up above. We relied on the groundwater, too,” the captain added.

Orange County Fire Chief Brian Fennessy explained in an interview on Wednesday that another issue firefighters are struggling with is how flammable much of the ground in the area is.

All that dead, dry chaparral is still on those hillsides, it’s mixed in with the green, live brush that eventually dies,” he told Fox News. “So, that also contributes to the rapid spread that we’re seeing with these fires. … That dead vegetation still is up on the side of those mountains.”

The Canadian presence in fighting the fires is notable given the increasingly frequency of devastating wildfires in the country, which many experts attribute to poor forest management and a disorganized and unprepared firefighting apparatus under the leftist government of outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Canada has no federal emergency agency akin to America’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and no national fire authority, meaning provinces have to fend for themselves, even when wildfires become large enough to span several provinces. Experts have warned for years that the Canadian government failing to clear underbrush and engage in proper forest management could lead to disaster.

“Canada has failed to fund the proactive management of forest fires sufficiently and is not poised to do better moving forward,” Canadian think-tank Fraser Institute senior fellow Kenneth P. Green wrote in June 2023, a year in which Canada saw fires so large they engulfed New York City in dense orange smoke. “Despite the increasing occurrence of wildfire disasters in Canada, funding to support wildfire prevention, mitigation and preparedness have not kept pace with the increasing need to mitigate the impacts from wildfires.”

In 2021, an article in the Canadian Globe and Mail accused officials of making “decades of bad decisions” on forest management.

“Research on forests in British Columbia shows that in centuries past, small- to moderate-size fires were common every several decades. Underbrush and deadfall on the forest floor would burn away, but many trees would survive,” the newspaper explained, leaving forests “full of deadfall, which is basically kindling.”

Canada failed to contain the 2023 wildfires, which continued to burn under dense snow in the winter as “zombie fires.”

Trudeau moved rapidly to blame “climate change” for the devastating fires in 2023. Emissions caused by the wildfires made Canada one of the world’s worst polluters in 2023.

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