This is Canada’s worst-ever wildfire season with more than 1000 active fires burning across the country,including 265 in the Northwest Territories. Experts say climate change has exacerbated the wildfire problem.
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Drought has been a contributing factor to the number and intensity of this year’s fires,officials say,with high temperatures exacerbating the situation. Much of Canada has seen abnormally dry conditions.
Shane Thompson,the territorial environment minister,said the evacuation order had been issued late pn Wednesday to give people time to get out before the weather turned bad.
“The urgency is,fire changes drastically ... the conditions are in our favour right now,but that will change on Saturday,” he told the CBC.
In total,about 65 per cent of the Territories’ population of 46,000 would be evacuated,he said.
The Territories have limited infrastructure and there is only one two-lane road out of Yellowknife to the province of Alberta to the south,where the closest of three evacuation centres is more than 1100 km from Yellowknife.
The deadline for residents to leave Yellowknife is noon on Friday (Saturday AEST).
Yellowknife Mayor Rebecca Alty said special teams were clear-cutting trees close to the city to prevent flames from spreading. They also planned to use fire retardant while ensuring sprinkler systems were working,she told the CBC.
Canada’s two largest airlines said they were adding flights from Yellowknife and capping fares following outrage on social media about some soaring prices.
Some of the evacuees will be flown to Calgary,in Alberta. Iain Bushell,Calgary’s emergency management director,said the city could accommodate and feed 5000 people.
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“We are prepared to house them and help them for as long as they need,” he told a televised briefing.
In a social media post,the Northwest Territories fire service said a fire that had been threatening Hay River,a community of some 3000 further south on Great Slave Lake,had stalled overnight.
So far about 134,000 square km of land in Canada have been scorched,more than six times a 10-year average. Nearly 200,000 people have been forced to evacuate at some point this season.
“The territories have never seen anything like this before in terms of wildfire ... it’s an unimaginable situation for so many,” Mike Westwick,the Territories’ fire information officer,told the CBC.
The blazes have also affected industrial and energy production. Diamond producer De Beers said in a statement that its Gahcho Kue mine,some 280km north-east of Yellowknife,continued to operate although a number of employees from surrounding communities had been evacuated.
In May 2016,a huge fire destroyed 10 per cent of structures in the northern energy-producing Alberta city of Fort McMurray,forcing the evacuation of 90,000 residents and shutting in more than a million barrels per day of oil output.
In June 2021,90 per cent of the structures in the British Columbia village of Lytton burnt down,a day after it recorded Canada’s hottest-ever temperature.