The flames keep gaining ground. Faced with the immensity of the blaze, thousands of inhabitants have no choice but to evacuate, leaving behind everything they own or almost. In Canada, the fires continue to progress in the west of the country, where two huge blazes have merged under the force of the north winds. The disaster is particularly rife in the Shuswap region, 500 kilometers northeast of Vancouver. According to firefighters in British Columbia, the fire now extends over more than 41,000 hectares. “Fire soldiers are working to stop the progression of the fire towards structures in areas where it continues to actively advance through woods and grasslands,” they said on X (ex-Twitter) on Sunday. Canada is experiencing a record-breaking wildfire season this year, with 14 million hectares (the size of Greece) burned. This is double the last record dating from 1989.
In the west of the country, several buildings in this tourist region have already been destroyed. The city of Kelowna, about 150,000 people, 150 kilometers south of Shuswap, where thousands of people had to evacuate, is still enveloped in thick, fragrant smoke on Sunday and visible more than 100 kilometers around the city. “It was horrible to spend the week with this air, it’s horrible to breathe,” said Saturday evening Mary, 29, who came from Montreal to visit a friend in Glenmore, a district of Kelowna. His return flight was canceled and the Kelowna airport closed to aid the aircraft’s firefighting efforts.
On the other side of Lake Okanagan, in West Kelowna, a significant number of homes have burned, according to the authorities, who are however optimistic about the fight against the fires, for the first time since Thursday. “We’re four days in, it feels like months, but things are looking up,” West Kelowna Fire Chief Jason Brolund said Sunday. “We finally have the impression of moving forward rather than backward,” he said.
Across British Columbia, under a state of emergency, about 30,000 people have been ordered to evacuate and another 36,000 are on high alert and ready to flee, local authorities said. The fires also affect northern Canada, including the capital of the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife, where nearly all of the 20,000 inhabitants had to evacuate. “We have tough days ahead,” Mike Westwick, the provincial government’s fire information officer, said Sunday night. “This fire covers such a large area that the weather conditions are different in some sections.”
A summer “like no other”
“It’s a summer like no other, we’re seeing it across the country, whether it’s in Nova Scotia, across western Canada, we’ve had extreme weather events that have a huge impact in the country,” said Justin Trudeau during a press conference in support of Canadians on Sunday. Canada has been confronted in recent years with extreme weather events, the intensity and frequency of which have been increased by climate change.