Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday (June 2) described the situation in the wildfire-ravaged country as ‘scary’. Canada is currently confronting one of its worst starts to wildfire season.
“This is a scary time”, he said.
On Friday, a coastal city in Quebec ordered some 10,000 of its residents to evacuate their homes. The wildfires are spreading in eastern Canada and firefighting resources are already stretched tackling the fires across the country.
The wildfires have scorched more than 2.7 million hectares of land so far this year across Canada. This is equal to more than five million football fields, according to federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair. That’s more than ten times the average area typically burned by this time of year over the past decade.
Blair said in a briefing on Friday morning that there were 214 fires burning across Canada out of which 93 are out of control. 29,000 people have been evacuated.
Wildfires are common in Canada’s western provinces, but this year the eastern province of Nova Scotia is reeling from its worst-ever wildfire season.
The province on the Atlantic coast has had nearly 200 wildfires. These have burned more than 19,000 hectares and have displaced more than 25,000 people. For comparison, there were 152 wildfires that burned 3380 hectares in the year 2022.
Evacuation in Quebec
Stephane Lauzon, a member of Parliament from Quebec, told a news conference in Ottawa that as many as 10,000 residents, or one-third of the population of Sept Iles would be displaced.
Steeve Beaupre, mayor of Sept Iles on St Lawrence River declared a local state of emergency. He announced a mandatory evacuation as wildfires nearby “advanced very quickly” overnight.
In the morning, the residents were asked to vacate their homes by 4 pm local time (2100 GMT).
Earlier, on Thursday, 500 residents from Chapais in the north of the province were evacuated.
“The situation is quickly changing in Quebec,” Lauzon said, adding that about 100 fires, “many more than yesterday,” were burning in the province, including about 20 out of control.
Wildfires started after major flareups in the west of the country in May, mainly in the Prairies provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
In the past week, firefighting shifted to Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast.
(With inputs from agencies)
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