Yellowknife authorities ordered residents Wednesday night to evacuate Canada’s largest city in the far north by the weekend due to rapidly advancing flames.
“Unfortunately, the bushfire situation is worsening, with an inferno west of Yellowknife posing a real threat,” the Northwest Territories Environment Minister said in ordering the evacuation.
In a press conference, Shane Thompson urged the 20,000 inhabitants of the capital of the Northwest Territories to leave Yellowknife by air or by road.
“The city is not in immediate danger, (…) but without rain the fires could reach the outskirts of the city this weekend,” Thompson said.
“If you stay until the weekend, you risk putting yourself and others in danger,” the minister added.
Canada’s prime minister said Wednesday that the military remains deployed to provide aid to the Northwest Territories.
“We will continue to provide you with the necessary resources” and “provide you with all possible assistance,” Justin Trudeau wrote on the X social network (formerly Twitter).
On Tuesday, Yellowknife Mayor Rebecca Alty had already warned residents to prepare for a possible evacuation if the flames, then 20 kilometers from the city, continued to advance.
Yellowknife is surrounded by four wildfires to the northwest, north, and southeast.
At least one Yellowknife hospital has already reduced its activities and transferred patients to other cities in southern Canada.
More than 6,000 people, around 15% of the population, have already been evacuated by military aircraft from remote communities in the Northwest Territories, threatened by a wave of more than 230 active bushfires.
On the same day, authorities in the Northwest Territories declared a state of emergency for the entire region.
Canada is experiencing its worst bushfire season in its history, with thousands of fires already leading to the issuance of more than 200 evacuation orders this year, forcing some 168,000 people to temporarily leave their homes.
The fires emitted the equivalent of more than a billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), an unprecedented record, Canadian authorities said last week.
The value is almost equal to the annual emissions of Japan (1.12 billion tons of CO2 in 2021), the fifth largest polluter in the world.
The fires have so far burned 13.5 million hectares, the equivalent of the area of Greece, and almost double the area of the last absolute record, which dates from 1989 with 7.3 million hectares, according to the Interagency Center. Canadian Forest Fire.
Since May, Canada has received help from some 5,000 firefighters from 12 countries, including Portugal, in June.
Source: TSF
