Canadian authorities have ordered an emergency evacuation in a far northern city as wildfires advance. The flames could reach the town by the weekend, while over 1,000 wildfires are currently burning across the country.
Residents of one of the largest cities in Canada’s far north were ordered Wednesday to flee amid warnings that raging wildfires could reach it by the weekend.
The crisis in the town of Yellowknife is the newest chapter of a terrible summer for wildfires in Canada, as flames spread quickly across the country, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate and charring large swathes of land.
More than 1,000 wildfires are burning across the vast country, including about 230 in the Northwest Territories, in Canada’s taste of a hot and destructive summer in much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Shane Thompson, the Northwest Territories’ environment minister, ordered the city’s nearly 20,000 residents to leave by noon Friday. There is only one highway open to the south. Commercial and military flights were also being arranged.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that Ottawa would “assist however we can.”
As of late Wednesday, the wildfire was within 17 kilometers (11 miles) of Yellowknife, the regional capital.
“I want to stress that the city is not in immediate danger,” Thompson said.
But he added: “Without rain, it is possible (the fire) will reach the city outskirts by the weekend.”
Yellowknife declared an emergency earlier this week, which was soon expanded across the vast Northern Territory as firefighters were forced to pull back in some areas.
Strong winds have stoked the flames, and several towns and Indigenous communities are already under evacuation orders.
This season, mega-fires have spread across Canada with remarkable intensity, forcing 168,000 people to flee their homes and scorching 13.5 million hectares (33.4 million acres), almost twice the area of the last record of 7.3 million hectares, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center.
Miroslava Salazar, with AFP
