Red Cross wildfire response trumps all disaster relief in recent history, including COVID

By Medicine Hat News on August 23, 2025.

asmith@medicinehatnews.com

The 2025 nationwide wildfire response has been the biggest in recent Red Cross history.

Since May, the Red Cross has provided humanitarian assistance to people impacted by wildfires across the country, including Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Atlantic Canada. This work has even surpassed the response from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Operations have included 1,200 personnel, registering 52,000 people, securing 815 flights for 10,000 people and securing 200,000 hotel nights, as well as operating a mega-congregate shelter with capacity for more than 3,000 people.

“We have reached a critical tipping point this response season, with more than 1,200 Red Cross personnel deployed to support operations in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Atlantic Canada,” said Conrad Sauvé, president and CEO, Canadian Red Cross.

“This represents the largest volume of domestic response operations in our modern history, with needs continuing to rise. We continue to surge our response with specialized expertise to meet rising demands. Continued investment in our Civilian Response capacity is critical as we can no longer treat these events as exceptional,” said Sauvé.

In light of this, the Red Cross has reported a need for strengthened capacity to respond to all-hazard events in Canada, a permanent investment in a civilian operational response capacity and enhanced coordination across government and whole-of-society response actors.

Red Cross says this year’s rise in response operations demonstrates a year-over-year trend in rising emergencies across Canada and moving forward, continued investments in pan-Canadian civilian response capacity are critical to maintaining the response capacity needed to respond to rising events.

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