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.
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
UPDATED FORECAST: The warning covered areas of Pingtung County and Hengchun Peninsula, while a sea warning covering the southern Taiwan Strait was amended The Central Weather Administration (CWA) at 5:30pm yesterday issued a land warning for Typhoon Usagi as the storm approached Taiwan from the south after passing over the Philippines. As of 5pm, Usagi was 420km south-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost tip, with an average radius of 150km, the CWA said. The land warning covered areas of Pingtung County and the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春), and came with an amended sea warning, updating a warning issued yesterday morning to cover the southern part of the Taiwan Strait. No local governments had announced any class or office closures as of press time last night. The typhoon
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