NPR News: 07-21-2026 2AM EDT

Giles Snyder· Host0:00

Live from NPR News, I'm Giles Snyder. The wildfires in the Canadian province of Ontario are growing. Officials say crews are battling one hundred ninety active blazes, and some eighteen hundred residents have had to flee the flames. Annabella Bonatta is a climate scientist at Ontario's University of Waterloo. She says climate change is making wildfire seasons worse.

Annabella Bonatta· Soundbite0:24

Wildfire is a natural process for the boreal and many of our forests in Canada, so we need it in order to regenerate the forest and have healthy forests. However, with, you know, some of the impacts that we're seeing when the wildfire starts that far away, it's so remote and in such a large area, um, they're not really meant to be put out, uh, but they're becoming too big and so having other impacts, such as the wildfire smoke that we're seeing travel thousands of kilometers.

Giles Snyder· Host0:49

Heavy smoke from the Ontario fires as well as fires in northern Minnesota spread into several U.S. states in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic last week. Air quality has since improved. Meanwhile, Ontario Premier Doug Ford is chiding President Trump for making tariff threats over smoke from the wildfires, saying the U.S. should help instead. On Monday, Trump announced new fifty percent tariffs on a wide range of Canadian goods using Section three thirty-eight of the Tariff Act of nineteen thirty. Residents of a large area of South and Central Texas are working to clean up from the region's second major flood in just over a year. Texas Public Radio's Camille Phillips reports.