2023-08-19 22:48:39
Thousands more people have been called to evacuate because of the wildfires in western Canada’s British Columbia province. A corresponding order now applies to around 30,000 residents, said the provincial disaster protection minister, Bowinn Ma, on Saturday. 36,000 other residents of the province have been instructed to be ready for a possible evacuation.
Ma called on affected residents to immediately respond to evacuation calls. “They are a matter of life and death, not just for the people in these homes, but for the first responders who often go back and try to get people to leave.” According to British Columbia Prime Minister David Eby, the evacuation order even applies to 35,000 people.
A state of emergency was declared in British Columbia on Friday. The city of West Kelowna, which has a population of 30,000, was particularly hard hit by the fires. According to the authorities, a “considerable number” of houses burned down there. The metropolitan city of Kelowna, across Okanagan Lake, was shrouded in thick smoke on Saturday.
More than a thousand wildfires are currently raging across Canada, including more than 370 in British Columbia. In the Northwest Territories, where authorities counted more than 230 fires, the town of Yellowknife, home to around 20,000 people, has been almost completely evacuated in the past 48 hours.
A total of around 14 million hectares of forest have already burned in Canada this year, and four people have died in forest fires. According to scientists, climate change is leading to more frequent and more violent forest fires.
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