2023-08-19 15:33:03
Thousands of people had to be evacuated in northern and western Canada. Firefighters continued Saturday to fight once morest fires of a rare magnitude.
“At least 19,000 people have been evacuated from Yellowknife in the last 48 hours”, almost the entire city, said Friday evening Shane Thompson, Minister of Environment for the Northwest Territories, of which Yellowknife is the capital.
15,000 people fled by road, 3,800 were evacuated by air while at least 300 firefighters were mobilized to fight the flames, he added, one of the most important devices that has known this very isolated region of the Canadian Far North.
Refugees from the Far North were received in a small room to be registered and distributed to hotels. Fruit, biscuits and water were made available to them.
At least 40 flights carrying some 3,500 passengers from Yellowknife have landed in Calgary, and the city has made 495 hotel rooms available for evacuees, authorities said.
Evacuated campus
British Columbia, regarding 600 km west of Calgary, is also facing blazes and had to declare a state of emergency on Friday.
The fires particularly affect West Kelowna (more than 30,000 inhabitants), where “a significant number” of houses burned down, according to the authorities.
The luxury hotel Lake Okanagan Resort, which in the past has hosted senior politicians such as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is among the buildings ravaged by the flames, as shown by images circulating in the local press.
The situation is also critical on the other side of Lake Okanagan, in Kelowna (regarding 150,000 inhabitants), where the local campus of the University of British Columbia, which welcomes more than 11,000 students, has been placed. under evacuation order on Friday evening.
Airspace in the region has also been closed to aid the efforts of firefighting aircraft.
Trudeau’s trip
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled Friday evening to Edmonton, regarding 1,000 km from Yellowknife, where he met with evacuees from the North at a reception center.
Mr Trudeau spoke of “uncertain and frightening times” as more than a thousand fires are currently ravaging the country from east to west, including more than 230 in the Northwest Territories and more than 370 in British Columbia .
Canada has been confronted in recent years with extreme weather events whose intensity and frequency are increased by global warming.
The country is experiencing a record-breaking wildfire season this year: 168,000 Canadians have been evacuated across the country and 14 million hectares – regarding the size of Greece – have burned, double the last record dating from 1989.
ats, afp
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