The fire that threatened the homes is not extinguished and the whole territory is still under a state of emergency but the danger has moved away thanks to a drop in temperatures in particular, according to the authorities.
“Welcome home”: the 20,000 inhabitants of Yellowknife, in the Canadian Far North, began to return on Wednesday, three weeks after having to evacuate urgently due to a huge forest fire at the gates of the city.
The last roadblock preventing access to the territory was lifted late Wednesday morning and regular airline flights resumed. “We’re home!” exclaimed on Instagram Steph Hendrix, posing under the blue skies of Yellowknife with her dog.
“We were looking forward…but watching the devastation caused by the fires from the highway was devastating and sad,” she wrote, saying she was “grateful” to find her house intact.
“Yellowknife will look a little different”
Since the evacuation ordered on August 16 in the evening, the 20,000 inhabitants of Yellowknife had to take refuge several hundred, even thousands, of kilometers from their city, most of them in Alberta, where several evacuation centers had been opened.
“Yellowknife will look a little different, firebreaks are all over the city,” Mayor Rebecca Alty said Wednesday in a video posted to X.
“The services offered are really basic for now,” she added, asking residents to be patient during this transition period. Essential workers and store workers were allowed to return on Monday to prepare for the return to this city, which is far from any other urban center.
Canada is experiencing a historic year of fires that breaks all records: 16.5 million hectares have already burned. It is mainly sparsely populated areas that have been affected, particularly the boreal forest, but with very heavy effects on the environment.
More than 1,000 fires are still active in the country, of which more than 690 are considered out of control. About 200,000 Canadians have been displaced by these fires, particularly in the West and the Far North.
2023-09-07 18:19:20
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