The evacuations took place Monday and yesterday in the vast Northwest Territories. It is the largest evacuation operation ever in the region, AFP news agency reports. A state of emergency was declared late last night in the entire region due to the ongoing forest fires. “This is a crisis situation and the government is using all possible means,” environment minister Shane Thompson said.
‘Flames over my car’
Jordan Evoy, 28, who lives in Forth Smith, Canada, told AFP he tried to escape the fire in his car. En route to safety, which he hoped to find in the neighboring province of Alberta, he was turned back by officers.
“The highway was surrounded by fire and there was smoke everywhere. It was one of the scariest moments of my life,” he said. “The flames came over my car, I was afraid my tires would melt. Even the road surface was on fire.” The authorities called on him in plain language to go to the airport: “the safest way to get out of here is by plane.”
The 63-year-old Michel Labine, who is at the BBC tells his story, also fled from his hometown of Forth Smith.
“The sky was already a bit gray in the morning from the smoke, in the afternoon it suddenly became pitch black. It broke open for a moment and then the sky turned bright red,” he said. The fire department came by and told him to leave. Like Evoy, he fled aboard one of the military planes.
1100 more forest fires
In total, some 6,500 people were evacuated from Northwest Territories. There are some 236 wildfires raging and several communities have already been razed to the ground.
As far as is known, no casualties have been reported in the last fires. A total of four Canadians died in the fires this year, with about 1,100 still raging across the country today.
Depending on the wind direction, a number of other villages and towns in the northern region risk being evacuated. The fire service reports that extinguishing the fires in the sparsely populated area is extra challenging because there are so few access roads.
The Netherlands burned down more than three times
A state of emergency has also been declared in the provincial capital of Yellowknife due to the “imminent threat” of the wildfires. Residents must prepare to leave at any time.
In Canada, 13.5 million hectares of area have already gone up in flames this year. That is more than three times the area of the whole of the Netherlands or about the same area as Greece.
2023-08-16 02:59:45
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