Wildfires on Friday bore down on two Canadian cities, with firefighters in the west bracing for another “scary” night as stunned refugees from the far north began arriving at shelters after their entire city was evacuated.
The two fronts in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories are just the latest in a summer of devastating wildfires across the country that have forced tens of thousands from their homes and left millions of hectares scorched.
The blazes have caused “terrible loss,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters after meeting evacuees from Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, as they arrived in Edmonton, Alberta, hundreds of kilometers to the south with no idea when they would return home again.
Photo: Reuters
Meanwhile, British Columbia Premier David Eby declared a state of emergency in the province late on Friday.
The announcement came as the fire burning west of Kelowna, a town of 150,000 people in the Okanagan Valley, exploded a hundred fold in size to 6,800 hectares in the past day.
Officials described firefighters being forced to pull back and some becoming trapped behind lines while making “heroic efforts” to rescue residents.
Photo: AFP
“We fought hard last night to protect our community,” local fire chief Jason Brolund told a briefing. “A significant number of structures were lost,” he said, but no injuries or fatalities were reported.
“It was like 100 years of firefighting all at once, in one night,” he said, adding that he expected “another scary night tonight” under an eerie glow of the fires.
Thousands of households on Kelowna’s west side were ordered evacuated or told late on Thursday to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
“The situation is unpredictable right now and there are difficult days ahead,” Eby told a news conference.
In the far north, Yellowknife was a ghost town late on Friday after ordering its entire population to leave by the afternoon — the largest ever evacuation from the region.
Most of its 20,000 inhabitants left by road to the nearest evacuation center 1,150km away in Alberta, where several sites had been set up.
Almost 4,000 people flew out, officials said, with a pilot on one of the relief flights telling Canadian media that the lakeside city was “pretty empty.”
Yellowknife has not been abandoned: Crews remained to erect defenses as the flames approached, while water bombers have been seen and the Canadian military is also helping out.
Several towns and Indigenous communities had already been evacuated.
The evacuation from Yellowknife means half the population of the near-arctic territory has been displaced.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
SHARED VALUES: The US, Taiwan and other allies hope to maintain the cross-strait ‘status quo’ to foster regional prosperity and growth, the former US vice president said Former US vice president Mike Pence yesterday vowed to continue to support US-Taiwan relations, and to defend the security and interests of both countries and the free world. At a meeting with President William Lai (賴清德) at the Presidential Office in Taipei, Pence said that the US and Taiwan enjoy strong and continued friendship based on the shared values of freedom, the rule of law and respect for human rights. Such foundations exceed limitations imposed by geography and culture, said Pence, who is visiting Taiwan for the first time. The US and Taiwan have shared interests, and Americans are increasingly concerned about China’s
RSS