Evacuation order expands near Prince Albert
PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. — The reeve of a Saskatchewan community threatened by a fast-moving wildfire says firefighters and farmers are uniting to slow the blaze.
“It’s very smoky here. It’s dark,” Ryan Scragg of the Rural Municipality of Garden River said Wednesday. “Everybody’s doing the best they can at this point.”
Scragg said people in the area are no strangers to fire, but this one has been fuelled by a nearby forest that hasn’t seen a blaze in decades. Helicopters were fighting the uncontrolled fire from the air and farmers were helping provide water on the ground to help save their neighbours’ properties, Scragg said.
People in eight homes in the municipality’s Berg subdivision, about 40 kilometres northeast of Prince Albert, were forced to leave Wednesday morning.
Dozens of people have had to leave their homes since the fire started on Monday near the province’s third-largest city of about 40,000. A state of emergency was declared later that day for Prince Albert and Buckland.
Officials said evacuees from 75 households in Prince Albert have been registered.
The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency said the fire has continued to grow to more than 40 square kilometres due to high winds and significantly dry conditions in the forest.
But Steve Roberts with the agency said it
was moving farther away from Prince Albert, which is about 140 km northeast of Saskatoon.
The fire was not producing a significant amount of smoke in the city, he added. Colder weather in the forecast was also making officials optimistic about getting the blaze under control, he said.
No homes have been destroyed but many communities north of Prince Albert were left without electricity due to significant damage to power infrastructure.
SaskPower said 8,000 customers were still without service on Wednesday.