Firefighters wage epic battle to save communities after mass evacuations
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA >> Firefighters battling wildfires in western Canada received help from reinforcements and milder weather Saturday, after the nation’s worst fire season on record destroyed structures, fouled the air with thick smoke and prompted evacuation orders for tens of thousands of residents.
Flames were being held at bay 9 miles from Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, and weary firefighters had a reprieve around Kelowna in British Columbia. But the firefighters were nowhere close to declaring victory, especially with drier and windier weather forecast for the coming days.
“We’re by no means out of the woods yet,” Mike Westwick, wildfire information officer for Yellowknife, told The Associated Press. “We still have a serious situation. It’s not safe to return.”
Yellowknife has been a virtual ghost town since a majority of the city’s 20,000 residents started to flee following an evacuation order issued Wednesday evening, officials said. Long caravans of cars choked the main highway for days and those who couldn’t take to the road lined up for emergency flights out of the city. The last 39 hospital patients were flown out Friday night on a Canadian Forces plane, officials said.
On Saturday, officials said the only road leading out of Yellowknife was safe, for the time being. About 2,600 people remained, including emergency teams, firefighters, utility workers and
Evacuees leave a neighborhood near Knox Mountain after a wildfire evacuation alert was upgraded to an order in Kelowna, British Columbia, on Friday.
police officers, along with some residents who refused to leave.
Charlotte Morritt was among those who left on Thursday, reaching that decision because of the unbearable smoke that she feared would be unhealthy for her 4-month-old son.
Morritt, a journalist with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, and her son took an evacuation flight some 950 miles west to safety in Whitehorse, Yukon, while her partner stayed behind to monitor their property, and help create firebreaks and fight fires.
“We knew it was only a matter of time,” said Morritt, who had been following media updates and satellite images of the approaching wildfires.
Air tankers dropped water and fire retardant to keep the flames from Yellowknife. A 6-mile fire line was dug, and firefighters deployed 12 miles of hose and a plethora of pumps.
Canada has seen a record number of wildfires this year that have caused choking smoke in parts of the U.S. All
told, there have been more than 5,700 fires, which have burned more than 53,000 square miles from one end of Canada to the other, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
All of British Columbia was under a state of emergency Saturday. About 35,000 people have been ordered to evacuate wildfire zones across the province and 30,000 people were under an evacuation alert, meaning they should be prepared to leave, Premier David Eby announced.
Eby told reporters Saturday that the situation was “grim” and warned that the “situation changes very quickly.”
He said he was restricting nonessential travel to fire-affected areas to free up accommodations such as hotels, motels and campgrounds for displaced residents and firefighters.
A change in the weather pattern carried smoke and haze from British Columbia into the Seattle area on Saturday, said Dustin Guy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.