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30,000 people have been evacuated from the fires in Canada
30,000 people evacuated in British Columbia province as wildfires rage in western Canada
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British Columbia, faced with the fires, had to declare a state of emergency on Friday.
AFP
About 30,000 people had to be evacuated to western Canada, where firefighters battled a blaze of rare intensity on Saturday that will leave a “lasting scar.”
“The situation is very fluid and the numbers are constantly changing, but at this point there are about 30,000 people under evacuation orders, and another 36,000 people are being put on alert for possible evacuation,” he said. Western Emergency Manager Bowin Ma said. Province of British Columbia.
“We emphasize the absolute importance of immediate compliance with evacuation orders,” he told a press conference. “It’s a life-or-death issue for people on these properties, but it’s also an issue for relief workers who sometimes come back and ask people to leave.”
“You don’t have to be there.”
British Columbia Premier David Eby gave slightly different figures: 35,000 people ordered to evacuate and 30,000 told to prepare to leave if necessary. “If you don’t have to be there, please stay out of these areas,” David Eby said.
Fires are also spreading in northern Canada. “It’s the first time anything like this has happened in this area,” Tony Whitford, 82, told AFP on Saturday. He and his family were evacuated Thursday from Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, which has been engulfed in flames for days, to Calgary, Alberta, 1,750 km south.
At least 19,000 people have been evacuated from Yellowknife in the past 48 hours, almost the entire town, Environment Minister for the Northwest Territories Shane Thompson said on Friday evening.
A very isolated area
A total of 15,000 people evacuated by road and 3,800 were evacuated by air, mainly to Calgary, where at least 300 firefighters were mobilized to fight the blaze, he added. One of the most important pieces of equipment known for this isolated part of the Canadian remote. North.
“It was so bad. I couldn’t believe it,” said Martha Kanadciak, 59, a Yellowknife resident of more than 20 years who arrived in Calgary late Friday. “I’m fine, but I’m sad, depressed and anxious. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the Inuit retiree, who brought only two small bags with him.
The city of Calgary has provided 495 hotel rooms for evacuees, officials said. The fire was within 15 km of Yellowknife on Saturday, but winds from the northwest could push the flames closer to the city limits, Canadian officials said.
Thick smoke
British Columbia is also dealing with fires and had to declare a state of emergency on Friday. Thick smoke engulfed the city of Kelowna, 600 km west of Calgary, home to about 150,000 people, AFP reporters said.
A local University of British Columbia campus with more than 11,000 students was placed under evacuation orders Friday evening and airspace in the area was closed to aid firefighting efforts.
The situation is critical on the other side of Okanagan Lake in West Kelowna (more than 30,000 people), where a “significant number” of homes have been burned and destroyed, according to officials. Several thousand evacuations were ordered in the US state of Washington and in neighboring British Columbia, where a fire broke out near the city of Spokane on Friday, local media reported. Authorities have confirmed one death.
(AFP)
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