“I’ve never seen anything like it,” added Moe, who grew up and lives in Shellbrook, 44 kilometres west of Prince Albert, near the fires. “In the way of the ferocity of the fires, how quickly they’re moving, how they’re changing and encroaching on communities.”
With 21 active wildfires as of Tuesday, eight of them uncontained, “it hasn’t rained this spring in the north,” added Moe, one of the provincial premiers who’ve been most vocal in promoting the fossil fuel development that is largely responsible for those conditions. “Things are tinder dry and the wind continues to blow each and every day and every few days it shifts direction and threatens a community in a different way, or threatens a new community.”
Days earlier, with 16 active wildfires across the province, Moe said Saskatchewan’s ability to fight the flames had reached the breaking point, CBC reported. “Resources are stretched thin because of the severity of the situation that we’re facing and the intensity and the proximity of the fires,” he said. “Just can’t have another fire.”
On Tuesday, an official with the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency said about 400 structures had been lost, and “extreme fire behaviour” had forced many firefighters to stand down in some locations. “It was so aggressive that they had to get out of the way for their own safety,” said Fire Commissioner Marlo Pritchard. “Today and tomorrow, we’re going to continue to see high winds and some very, very challenging conditions for our firefighters.”
Earlier this week, the safety agency instructed people in and within 20 kilometres of the town of La Ronge, including the nearby Lac La Ronge Indian Band and Air Ronge, to leave immediately. The Saskatchewan alert was issued while an air evacuation to Winnipeg continued for 2,000 members of the Pukatawagan Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba who were stranded late last week with a wildfire burning just a kilometre away.
The Pukatawagan refugees were forced to leave their homes carrying one bag each, according to news reports. And La Ronge residents Joslynn Thedorf, her 11-year-old daughter, and their four dogs had to live out of their SUV in a Prince Albert parking lot because they couldn’t find a hotel room, CBC reports.
Flin Flon, Manitoba business owner Dawn Hlady evacuated to Saskatoon, where Prime Minister Mark Carney and provincial/territorial premiers met Monday to start work on a list of major “nation-building” projects that might well include new fossil fuel infrastructure.
“It was very frustrating sitting in Saskatoon knowing that the premiers and all the politicians were there having their meetings. And you go online and you see them posting about the beautiful city. And how they’re doing this and that,” Hlady told CBC. “Meanwhile, your whole life is burning down and nobody can even pick up the phone and answer your question.”
Oil Sands Production Curtailed in Alberta
In Alberta, a crew of eight firefighters was forced to shelter in place and await rescue as a fire approached in Chipewyan Lake, about 450 kilometres north of Edmonton, CBC writes. About 25 people in Lac La Biche county, around 400 kilometres northeast of the provincial capital, were ordered out of their homes Wednesday afternoon. Two evacuation orders were issued for Yellowhead county as of Friday, but rescinded Monday, even though at least two fires in the area were still burning out of control.
Elsewhere in the province, Cenovus said it had taken 238,000 barrels of oil sands production offline. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. said on Saturday that its Jackfish 1 site had been evacuated and that 36,500 barrels a day had been shut in. The fire affecting the oil sands operators, dubbed the Caribou Lake Fire, was estimated at 615 square kilometres as of Monday and remained out of control.
“All workers are safe and accounted for with no reported injuries and have been relocated to other facilities in our thermal in situ operations,” the company said in a notice on its website.
MEG Energy had only critical operating staff on site at its Christina Lake operations. The fires caused an outage to a utility power line connected to the site, leaving the plant to run with onsite power. The outage delayed startup of a section of Christina Lake that had been down for maintenance.
Wildfires prompted a highway closure and evacuations near Fort Nelson, British Columbia Tuesday, with the B.C. Wildfire Service predicting “significant growth” in the fires in the days ahead, with winds up to 60 kilometres per hour pushing the fire north, south, and east towards the B.C.-Alberta border, CBC writes. “With relative humidity dropping below 20 [per cent], daytime temperatures in the 20s, and strong, persistent winds, aggressive and challenging fire behaviour is expected,” the service said in an online update.
Environment Canada reported Tuesday that the fires had triggered air quality warnings from northern B.C. to Thunder Bay, Ontario, and would produce moderate risk to the southeast in Belleville, Cornwall, Gatineau, Kingston, and Ottawa. By Wednesday evening, the smoke had drifted as far as Newfoundland and Labrador to the east and Texas to the south, CP said, prompting U.S. media to begin taking note that wildfire season has started up again in Canada.
“Right in the vicinity of the fires, the air quality is going to be particularly bad,” Environment Canada forecaster Natalie Hasell said Wednesday. “It’s really important for people to… pay attention to how you’re feeling and how other people around you are feeling.”
