Firefighters will be watching the skies over the next couple of days hoping for rain as wildfires along the Alberta-Northwest Territories boundary continue to force evacuations.
Firefighters will be watching the skies over the next couple of days hoping for help from Mother Nature asresidents have fled the 236 wildfires tearing through the northern boreal forest. More than 20,000 square kilometres have burned, an area almost four times the size of Prince Edward Island.Many highways have been closed by the fires and the territory is mounting what officials have called the largest airlift in its history.
In addition to the military deployment, the federal government said in a statement it is providing funding dedicated to response and recovery activities for eligible First Nations, while Public Services and Procurement Canada and the Canadian Coast Guard are also lending support.Late Tuesday, incident commander Gregg Walker said the fire near Fort Smith had moved to within four kilometres of the community, where 93 firefighters and six helicopters remain to fight the blaze.
“Two days ago, it spread quite a long ways from the west to the east directly towards Highway 5 and the town of Fort Smith,” Walker said. He wouldn’t speculate on whether the situation will get worse in the coming days and said it depends on the weather. Walker said a little rain did help.“We had a couple of millimetres of rain over parts of the fire and probably not all of it and that’s enough to give us a little bit of a break for a day or so but not longer than that,” he said.“We’d need 20 millimetres of rain or something more along those lines in order to get a week or 10 days’ reprieve.
The blaze currently bearing down on the Fort Smith area was one of 15 caused by lightning strikes back in May.
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