Unwieldy wildfires scorch Canada and threaten a community scarred by past catastrophe

Originally Published: 15 MAY 24 01:50 ET

Updated: 15 MAY 24 02:19 ET

By Elizabeth Wolfe, Joe Sutton and Sharif Paget, CNN

(CNN) — More than 100 wildfires tearing across Canada are choking the air with smoke and forcing thousands to evacuate as flames encroach on communities, including a city still haunted by a catastrophic 2016 fire dubbed “The Beast.”

Roads out of Fort McMurray in Alberta were crammed with evacuating cars Tuesday as an out-of-control 51,000-acre wildfirecreeps toward the city’s edge. The approaching flames mayconjure up terrifying memories for residents who lived through the 2016 fires, which forced 90,000 people to evacuate and wrought billions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses.

Evacuation orders have been issued for the city’s neighborhoods of Prairie Creek, Beacon Hill, Abasand and Grayling Terrace. The rest of the city and several surrounding suburbs have been warned they may need to evacuate at a moment’s notice.

A veil of thick smoke is making it difficult for firefighters to see as they battle “extreme fire behavior,” Alberta Wildfire Information Officer Josee St-Onge said. Safety concerns have prompted some firefighters to be removed from the front lines.

Extremely dry and windy conditions are driving the explosive growth of many of Canada’s fires. Despite wet weather on the horizon, firefighting will remain a challenge in several provinces through midweek due to gusty winds.

“Unfortunately, these are not favorable winds for us and the fire will continue to advance towards the town until we see a wind shift,” St-Onge said Tuesday.

Officials sought to assuage the concerns of residents who vividly recall the 2016 fires, which tore through more than 1.4million acres and destroyed about 2,400 homes and businesses – the most expensive natural disaster in Canada’s history.

“I want to recognize the anxiety that this brings, certainly to those residents that were here in 2016, and to those where this is their first experience and have heard the stories,” said Regional Fire Chief Jody Butz. “We are confident that we have the resources to defend these areas but we need people out of harm’s way.”

The country’s wildfire season is off to a troubling pace as new fires ignite each day and dormant so-called “zombie” fires reanimate. The 2024 fire season isn’t yet on par with last year’s record-shattering season but with wildfire behavior worsening in a warming world it’s no wonder Canadian fire officials are warning of an “explosive” season that may rival last year.

Hazardous smoke from the blazes has also been wafting into the US and reducing air quality.

Degraded air quality levels were in place Tuesday evening from the Dakotas into Oklahoma. The central US will remain the focal point for Canadian smoke through at least midweek.

‘It’s a war zone’

Multiple blazes have exploded in size across several provinces, forcing thousands of Canadians to flee their homes with children, pets and bags stuffed with essentials and cherished possessions in tow.

“This is a very difficult time for people who have been asked to leave behind their home, their belongings and their community without the certainty of what will remain when they return,” Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said in a Tuesday statement.

Manitoba first responders are tackling one of the largest wildfires in Canada, which has consumed at least 78,000 acres and had advanced within a mile of the Cranberry Portage community by Tuesday afternoon, according to the province’s wildfire service. More than 500 residents had been evacuated from the area as several neighborhoods were ordered to leave.

In British Columbia, the northeastern Parker Lake Fire has swelled to nearly 21,000 acres and was just over a mile west of the town of Fort Nelson as of early Tuesday morning. At least 4,700 people in the area are under evacuation orders, including the Fort Nelson First Nation.

Rick Seidel, the owner of a local construction and trucking company, told CNN affiliate CBC he stayed back to help fight the flames.

“We’ve had all our equipment ready and all our water trucks were loaded. When the call came we jumped into action,” Seidel told CBC on Monday.

“It’s really bad. It’s a war zone right now,” Seidel said.

Climate change fuels worstening wildfires

Gusty winds are driving ongoing fires in Canada, but the seeds of fire activity were sown over the winter and in past years as the world continues to warm because of human-driven climate change.

“This region has experienced multiple years of drought, with a below normal snowpack this past winter,” said Ben Boghean, fire behavior specialist for the BC Wildfire Service. “As a result of this, our forests in the Fort Nelson zone are very receptive to new fire ignitions and rapid rates of spread.”

Declining snow, increasing temperatures and worsening droughts are all hallmarks of climate change and are projected to keep driving larger and more intense fires across Canada, according to Environment Canada.

Last year was Canada’s most devastating fire season on record, including in British Columbia, where fires burned through hundreds of homes and an area the size of Maryland, according to the BC Wildfire Service.

There are more than 130 fires burning across Canada, 43 of which are considered out of control, according to the Canadian Interagency Fire Centre.

Some of the blazes are so-called “holdover fires” also known colloquially as “zombie fires,” the smoldering remains of last season’s epic blazes, burning deep in the ground throughout the winter and reigniting when exposed to warmer temperatures in the spring.

“In the past, the winter conditions are what put out a lot of holdover fires,” said Bowinn Ma, British Columbia’s minister of emergency management and climate readiness. “In this case, what we’ve seen is that due to higher temperatures and persistent drought through the last year, many of these holdover fires were not put out like they normally are.”

CNN’s Mary Gilbert, Eric Zerkel and Robert Shackelford contributed to this report.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.