Scenes from the fires raging from Yukon to Manitoba.
Forest fire season has hit Canada early, and it has hit Canada hard. As of Monday more than 2 million hectares of forest were on fire, thousands were on the run, several battalions’ worth of soldiers were being scrambled to Saskatchewan and even B.C.’s fa
THE INVASION OF SASK.
After days of non-stop firefighting, Saskatchewan’s 600 exhausted, charcoal-smeared firefighters have called in reinforcements. As many as 1,400 Canadian Forces soldiers are now en route to the prairie province. Firefighting isn’t part of basic training, and troops were required to get a 12-hour crash course on fire suppression before being sent to the front lines.
THE GREAT EXODUS
By Monday morning, one in every 100 Saskatchewanians was fleeing from fire, with as many as 50 communities turned into ghost towns almost overnight. It’s the largest single movement of people in the Wheat Province since the building of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and according to the Red Cross, it’s the largest evacuation they’re ever seen.
THE EMPTY TOWN
La Ronge is normally the largest community in Northern Saskatchewan with 2,700 people, but as of Monday the place was inhabited solely by emergency personnel. Flames were already licking at the city limits when a mandatory evacuation order was issued Saturday afternoon. In the sometimes chaotic evacuation that followed, residents fled in cars or were packed into school buses and shuttled out of the fire zone.
REFUGEES
Gymnasiums and recreation centres across Saskatchewan and Northern Alberta became seas of cots Monday. To avoid overloading communities with refugees, evacuated residents were scattered across the region, with some ending up in Saskatoon, Regina, Prince Albert or even 500 km away in Cold Lake, Alta. “Just imagine having nothing with you and just up and leaving,” said Cold Lake Mayor Craig Copeland.
HOLD OUTS
Not all those fleeing the flames are willing participants. As evacuees were ordered to leave homes, vehicles and even pets to their fate, police were forced to begin arresting holdouts who refused to leave. “If I’d been 20 years younger, I wouldn’t have left,” 90-yearold La Ronge resident Vern Studer told Saskatchewan’s CKOM radio. “They couldn’t get me out of there.”
MONITORING
Only a small contingent of firefighters, SaskPower and SaskEnergy personnel roamed the streets of La Ronge on Monday, monitoring the movements of several fires as they swept past the town. Bulldozers smashed “cat lines” in the surrounding wilderness to rob encroaching fires of fuel, water bombers pounded the forests to slow the spread of flames and sprinkler units were set up in the town’s north end.
ARSON AT LARGE
Lightning and careless campfires can be blamed for most of the fires sweeping through Western Canada, but amid evacuation efforts in Northern Saskatchewan over the weekend, officials quickly realized they were dealing with an arsonist. “It’s very disappointing that someone would neglect all of what was going on and cause extra impact for us,” said Duane McKay, commissioner of emergency management. The six fires were all set near the community of Hall Lake. RCMP are now trying to track down the unknown arsonist.
WATER BOMBERS REVIVED
On the shores of Sproat Lake, B.C., cabins went up in smoke almost within sight of a pair of Mars water bombers, the legendary firefighting aircraft that were grounded two years ago by the B.C. government. The enormous WWII-era aircraft, which can drop 27,000 litres in a single pass, were replaced by smaller “fire skimmers.’’ But this week, as houses fell to the flames, nearly 20,000 people signed a petition to get them back in the air. “Our province is burning and these are the best planes for the job!” it read. Late Monday, the owner of the planes said the government had agreed to put them back to work.
FIRST VICTIM
On Monday morning, the RCMP confirmed the grim news that forest fire season has claimed its first victim: A 61-year-old firefighter who normally works as a tree faller. The man’s name and cause of death were not released, but the area where he was working was strewn with “danger trees,” fire-damaged trees that are on the verge of toppling over. While few things in B.C. can rival a wildfire for sheer destructive power, they rarely kill people. When the province was consumed by catastrophic wildfires in 2003, the only three deaths resulting from the disaster were all due to air crashes.