Smoke from Canadian wildfires spreads as far south as Virginia
Handful of Nova Scotia blazes cause air-quality alert for Richmond area
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — The largest wildfires ever recorded in Canada’s Atlantic Coast province of Nova Scotia continued to grow, forcing the evacuation of hundreds more people and prompting air-quality warnings in U.S. regions as far south as Virginia and Maryland.
In all, there were four wildfires in the province burning out of control late this week, including the massive Barrington Lake fire in Shelburne County, which grew to more than 77 square miles despite a constant bombardment of water and fire retardant from a fleet of water bombers and air tankers.
A much smaller fire that started Wednesday received immediate attention after it prompted evacuations south of Shelburne, which is home to 1,300 people. Within hours the local Roseway Hospital was evacuated and residents started preparing to leave.
“It jumped up pretty quick with the high winds, low (humidity) and high temperatures,” Dave Rockwood, a spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources, said Thursday in a briefing. “We are hitting it very hard and fast.”
The fires in Shelburne County have forced more than 5,000 people from their homes and cottages, 50 of which have been consumed by flames. Natural Resources Minister Tory Rushton said the Barrington Lake fire was under a “major aerial attack.”
Meanwhile, municipal officials in Halifax have begun breaking the news to residents whose homes were lost to a fast-moving wildfire after they were evacuated earlier this week from subdivisions northwest of the city.
Deputy fire Chief David Meldrum said an audit of damaged and destroyed properties had been completed, but he could not provide the latest numbers.
U.S. officials as far south as Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania reported being impacted by the Canadian wildfires.
The National Weather Service in Wakefield, 164 miles south of Washington, issued an air-quality alert for Friday for the Richmond area due to smoke from wildfires across the northeast and Atlantic Canada.
St. Mary’s County Department of Emergency Services, about 80 miles south of Washington, warned residents in a tweet on Thursday that air quality might be impacted by the fires in southeastern Canada.
In Pennsylvania, the Chester County Health Department said Thursday in a tweet that the “smoke & haze from wildfires in Canada continue to linger” and warned the air could still be unhealthy for older adults, young children and people with respiratory problems.
Similar warnings were issued by the National Weather Service in Baltimore-Washington and the Philadelphia area, including parts of New Jersey, where officials warned sensitive groups to take precautions when going outside. A thick smoke plume was reported over Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Cooler temperatures and steady rain weren’t expected until late Friday, though the forecast called for some spotty showers during the day.