Crews From Canada Fight Wildfires; all Yellowknife residents evacuate

Aug 17 (Reuters) – Canadian fire crews battled early on Thursday to prevent wildfires from reaching the northern city of Yellowknife, home to 20,000 residents. leaving after an evacuation order It was declared.

Water bombers flew low over Yellowknife as thick smoke blanketed the capital of the vast and sparsely populated Northwest Territories.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau plans to call an Incident Response Group meeting to discuss the fires later Thursday, his office said. The group is made up of senior officials and ministers and meets in times of crisis.

This is the worst wildfire season in Canadian history with more than 1,000 active fires across the country, including 265 in the Northwest Territories. The experts say climate change has exacerbated the problem of forest fires.

The Territories, with a population of just 46,000 people, have limited infrastructure and there is only one two-lane highway from Yellowknife to the province of Alberta to the south, a journey of about 540 km (335 mi).

The deadline for residents to leave Yellowknife is Friday noon local time (1800 GMT). The fire is about 10 miles northeast of the city and authorities say it could reach the outskirts on Saturday if it doesn’t rain.

Yellowknife Mayor Rebecca Alty said special crews were felling trees near the city in an attempt to prevent the flames from spreading. She also planned to use fire retardants while making sure the sprinkler systems in the city work, she told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

“But there is still a big focus on firebreaks to slow the progress of the fire,” he said.

Alty said five flights would leave the airport on Thursday to transport those who did not have vehicles or did not feel up to making the long journey to Alberta.

Some 134,000 square kilometers (52,000 square miles) of land in Canada have burned so far, more than six times the 10-year average. Nearly 200,000 people have been forced to evacuate at some point this season.

In a social media post, the Territories fire service said a fire that had been threatening Hay River, a community of about 3,000 further south on Great Slave Lake, had stalled overnight.

“The territories have never seen anything like this before in terms of wildfires…it’s an unimaginable situation for many,” Mike Westwick, fire information officer for the territories, told CBC.

The fires have also affected industrial and energy production. Diamond producer De Beers said in a statement that its Gahcho Kue mine, some 280 km northeast of Yellowknife, was continuing to operate even though several employees from surrounding communities had been evacuated.

In May 2016, a major fire destroyed 10 percent of the structures in the northern Alberta energy-producing city of Fort McMurray, forcing the evacuation of 90,000 residents and shutting down more than a million barrels per oil production day

As of June 2021, 90% of the structures in the village of Lytton in British Columbia Burneda day after it recorded the highest temperature in Canadian history.

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