2023-08-16 00:00:49
Air evacuations continue Tuesday in remote communities in Canada’s North, threatened by forest fires that “engulf” roads, prompting the main city of the Northwest Territories to declare a state of emergency.
Nearly 168,000 people (the equivalent of a city like Le Havre) have had to be evacuated in Canada since the start of a record-breaking fire season. In the Northwest Territories, which has more than 230 active fires, about 15% of the population is currently evacuated, or more than 6,000 people, according to authorities.
Separated by several hundred kilometers from each other, these villages are “particularly difficult” to evacuate by land, explains Mike Westwick, of the territorial fire department, adding that a contingent of 120 soldiers was deployed on Tuesday to facilitate air evacuations .
Living in a municipality of some 2,250 people currently under evacuation orders, Jordan Evoy, 28, hoped to leave his home by car to take refuge in Alberta, a neighboring province, but a major forest fire forced him to turn back on Monday and flee by military aircraft.
Over 40°C in many cities
“I couldn’t see anything in front of me (…) There was no longer a network, so no way of knowing where I was, it was even more distressing,” he explains. Jordan Evoy worried that his truck’s tires would “melt” in the heat. “The highway was engulfed in flames, it was the scariest moment of my life,” he commented.
Monday evening, the territorial capital Yellowknife, a city of some 20,000 inhabitants, had declared a state of emergency due in particular to a blaze located 20 km away. The neighboring province of British Columbia, also hard hit by forest fires, recorded a mercury above the 40 degrees Celsius mark, a first this year in Canada, the Ministry of the Environment said on Tuesday. .
The distressing visuals of the forest fire in Alberta, Canada, consuming over 10,000 hectares of trees, are deeply unsettling. It’s alarming to see that the forest fire season is starting earlier and lingering longer.
What’s happening is far from normal, and it’s truly a cause… pic.twitter.com/DHXilB3UWa
— Ivan (@Ivankalema01) August 14, 2023
The town of Lytton saw the temperature reach 41.4 degrees on Monday, two years after it was ravaged by flames in the days following an unprecedented “heat dome” with an all-time high of 49.6 degrees for the country.
Canada, which due to its geographical location is warming faster than the rest of the planet, has been confronted in recent years with extreme weather events whose intensity and frequency have been increased by global warming.
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