Chloé Lagadou with AFP // Photo credit: AFP PHOTO / BC Wildfire Service
Residents of Yellowknife, one of the major cities in Canada’s Far North, have been ordered to evacuate by noon Friday due to rapidly advancing wildfires, local authorities said. “Unfortunately, the wildfire situation is turning for the worst with an blaze west of Yellowknife posing a real threat,” Northwest Territories Environment Minister Shane Thompson said Wednesday evening as he ordered the evacuation of the 20,000 residents of this city.
Nearly 168,000 people have had to be evacuated to Canada since the start of a season which, with currently 230 active fires, is breaking all records and is overwhelming these days the Northwest Territories, a northern region twice the size of the Metropolitan France. Separated by several hundred kilometers from each other, the villages of the region are “particularly difficult” to evacuate by land, explained earlier this week Mike Westwick, of the territorial fire department, specifying that a contingent of the army was deployed to facilitate air evacuations.
The fire 17 kilometers from the city
Shane Thompson asked people to leave Yellowknife by air or road by noon Friday, as the fire raged just 17 kilometers from town. There is only one open highway leading south. “The city is not in immediate danger (…) but without rain, the fire may reach the surroundings of the city this weekend,” Shane Thompson told a press conference.
“If you stay until the weekend, you risk endangering yourself and others,” he added. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday that the armed forces were still deployed to provide assistance to the people of the Northwest Territories. “We will continue to provide you with the necessary resources” and “provide all possible assistance”, he wrote on the X network (ex-Twitter).
Living in a municipality of some 2,250 people currently under evacuation orders, Jordan Evoy, 28, hoped to leave his home by car to take refuge in Alberta, a neighboring province, but a major forest fire forced him to turn back on Monday and flee by military aircraft.
“Engulfed in Flames”
“I couldn’t see anything in front of me (…) There was no longer a network, so no way of knowing where I was, it was even more distressing”, he explains to AFP. Jordan Evoy feared his truck’s tires would “melt” in the heat. “The highway was engulfed in flames, it was the scariest moment of my life,” he commented. The neighboring province of British Columbia, also hard hit by forest fires, recorded temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius this week, a first this year in Canada, according to the Ministry of the Environment.
In the town of Lytton, it was 41.4 degrees on Monday. Two years ago, the city was ravaged by flames in the days following a “heat dome” of 49.6 degrees, a record for the country. Canada, which due to its geographical location is warming faster than the rest of the planet, has been confronted in recent years with extreme weather events whose intensity and frequency have been increased by global warming.