The largest wildfires ever recorded in Canada’s Atlantic coast province of Nova Scotia continued to grow on Thursday, forcing the evacuation of hundreds more people and prompting air quality warnings in US regions as far south as Virginia and Maryland.
There were four wildfires in the province burning out of control on Thursday, including a massive Barrington Lake fire in Shelburne County, which grew to more than 200 square kilometers despite a constant bombardment of water and fire retardant from a fleet of water bombers and air tankers.
A much smaller fire that started on Wednesday received immediate attention after it prompted evacuations south of Shelburne, which is home to 1,300 people.
Photo: AFP
Within hours, local Roseway Hospital was evacuated and residents started preparing to leave.
“It jumped up pretty quick with the high winds, low [humidity] and high temperatures,” Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources spokesman Dave Rockwood said on Thursday. “We are hitting it very hard and fast.”
The fires in Shelburne County have forced more than 5,000 people from their homes, 50 of which have been consumed by flames.
The Barrington Lake fire was under a “major aerial attack,” Nova Scotia Minister of Natural Resources and Renewables Tory Rushton said.
Meanwhile, municipal officials in Halifax have begun breaking the news to residents whose homes were lost to a fast-moving wildfire after they were evacuated earlier this week from subdivisions northwest of the city.
The National Weather Service in Wakefield, Virginia, 263km south of Washington, yesterday issued an air quality alert for the Richmond, Virginia, area due to smoke from wildfires across northeast and Atlantic Canada.
Cooler temperatures and steady rain are not expected until today, but the forecast was calling for some spotty showers during the day yesterday.
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