Officials in western Canada’s British Columbia implored tens of thousands of residents to heed evacuation orders as “rapidly evolving” wildfires threatened large parts of the scenic Okanagan Valley, while Spanish firefighters made gains in their battle against a vast wildfire on the holiday island of Tenerife.
British Colombia Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness Bowinn Ma on Saturday said that the situation in the popular boating and hiking destination was “highly dynamic.”
About 30,000 people were under evacuation orders, while another 36,000 were under alert to be ready to flee, she said.
Photo: AP
“We cannot stress strongly enough how critical it is to follow evacuation orders when they are issued,” Ma told 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.”
Kelowna, a city of 150,000, was choked with thick smoke as it became the latest population center hit by one of the many wildfires scorching Canada this summer.
British Columbia alone had 385 active wildfires by late Saturday night, government data showed.
Photo: AFP
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he had spoken with British Columbia Premier David Eby about the “rapidly evolving and incredibly devastating wildfire situation,” and pledged federal resources in responding to the disaster.
In Spain, better-than-expected overnight weather helped firefighters keep the Tenerife wildfire from destroying homes, regional officials said.
The huge fire broke out late Tuesday in a mountainous northeastern area, quickly morphing into the biggest the Canary Islands had ever seen.
So far the blaze, which has a perimeter of 70km, has burned through 8,400 hectares, forcing more than 12,000 people to flee.
Despite expectations of a difficult night, things went “much better than expected,” Canary Islands President Fernando Clavijo said.
However, the firefighters “worked very intensively” and got through the night without losing a single home to the blaze, he said, describing it as “almost a miracle.”
Meanwhile, states across the typically arid US southwest yesterday braced for torrential rain and potentially life-threatening flooding, as Hurricane Hilary barreled up Mexico’s coast, where authorities reported at least one fatality.
At its peak, the storm reached a Category 4 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, but was expected to weaken to a tropical storm before reaching southern California yesterday afternoon, an advisory from the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
It was still packing nearly 140kph sustained winds with stronger gusts as it blew across the Baja California Peninsula early yesterday morning, the NHC said.
“Heavy rains from Hilary spreading northward over the Baja Peninsula and the southwestern United States,” the agency said. “Catastrophic and life-threatening flooding likely.”
In Mexico, one person died in Mexico after a vehicle was swept away by a rising stream, Mexico’s Civil Protection agency said in a statement on Saturday, while warning of landslides and road closures on the Baja California Peninsula.
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