Massive fires rage across Canada
Canada is facing a catastrophic spring wildfire season with huge and powerful blazes out of control in all corners of the country, and thousands more people displaced on Friday.
“This is a scary time for a lot of people from coast to coast to coast,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, alluding to the vastness of a nation stretching from the Pacific to the Atlantic to the Arctic oceans.
Some 10,000 people on Friday were ordered to evacuate from Sept Iles in Quebec in the face of advancing wildfires.
Steve Beaupre, mayor of the small city on the St Lawrence River, declared a local state of emergency and announced the mandatory evacuation after nearby wildfires “advanced very quickly” overnight.
On Thursday, 500 residents were evacuated from Chapais in the north of the province.
About 100 fires were burning in the province, including about 20 out of control.
Across Canada, more than 210 fires were burning on Friday after scorching more than 2.7 million hectares, with 29,000 people evacuated even before Friday’s order.
In Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast, about 200 homes have been destroyed and nearly 20,000 residents have been displaced by wildfires.
Officials are hoping the rain and cooler temperatures forecast for the weekend will bring relief, following a recordbreaking heatwave.
“Weather has favoured the fires all week, not the firefighters. We’re hopeful that this will soon change,” Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston told a briefing.
“We need rain. Hopefully that rain comes in sufficient amounts this weekend.”
Almost 1000 firefighters from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the US have arrived or are en route to bolster firefighting efforts.
The government was also deploying the military in Nova Scotia and Quebec to help out.
It follows major flareups in Canada’s west in May, notably in the prairy provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Canada has been hit repeatedly by extreme weather in recent years, the intensity and frequency of which have increased due to global warming.