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21-08-2023
OTTAWA/ BRITISH COLUMBIA: Authorities in western Canada have implored tens of thousands of people to heed evacuation orders and warned of difficult days ahead as “severe and fast-changing” forest fires in the province of British Columbia (BC) intensified further.
Premier Daniel Eby told reporters on Saturday that the number of people under an evacuation order in the province has doubled to 35,000 from a day earlier and that a further 30,000 were under an evacuation alert.
“The current situation is grim,” Eby said.
BC declared a state of emergency on Friday, with an out-of-control fire in the province’s southern region growing more than one hundredfold in 24 hours.
The fire centred on Kelowna, a city of 150,000 people and located some 300 kilometres (180 miles) east of Vancouver has partially shut down some sections of a key transit route between the Pacific coast and the rest of western Canada, and has destroyed many properties.
The situation in the popular boating and hiking destination was “highly dynamic”, said Bowinn Ma, BC’s minister of emergency management.
“We cannot stress strongly enough how critical it is to follow evacuation orders when they are issued,” she said at an afternoon news conference. “They are a matter of life and death not only for the people in those properties, but also for the first responders who will often go back to try to implore people to leave.”
Gord Milson, the mayor of West Kelowna, described the mood in the town as “anxious”.
“There’s just so much smoke it’s difficult to truly assess what’s occurring,” he told Al Jazeera. “But we were able to get further air support today which will help us fight the fires but unfortunately there was some structures lost last night and today. So, we are not out of it by any means.”
The blazes in BC come amid strong winds and dry lightning due to a cold mass of air interacting with hot air built-up in the sultry summer. Those conditions have intensified existing forest fires and ignited new ones.
The province accounts for more than a third of Canada’s 1,062 active fires.
“We are still in some critically dry conditions and are still expecting difficult days ahead,” said Jerrad Schroeder, deputy fire centre manager at the Kamloops Fire Centre.
Officials in BC said the province is in dire need of shelter for evacuees and firefighters and have ordered a ban on non-essential travel to make more temporary accommodation available. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
