Western Canada: Wildfire evacuations mark return of a nightmare

Good morning. Wendy Cox in Vancouver today.

For residents in the Abasand and Beacon Hill areas around Fort McMurray, Tuesday’s evacuation order was the return of a nightmare.

People in those two neighbourhoods, as well as residents of two others around Fort Mac, had to scramble for go-bags and flee, as a wildfire pressed toward the community. Abasand and Beacon Hill were badly hit in 2016 when a catastrophic fire that year destroyed 2,400 homes in Fort Mac and forced more than 80,000 to flee. The disaster was one of the most expensive in Canadian history.

Even those that weren’t ordered out Tuesday were pondering the fear of what might happen if the fire continues to demonstrate the “extreme” fire behaviour officials with Alberta Wildfire describe. By afternoon, the blaze had burned through more than 10,000 hectares.

Fort McMurray resident Ashley Russell said that, while she has not been ordered to evacuate, she remains on high alert given her experience last time.

“I’m experiencing a lot of anxiety and PTSD,” she said. “I was here in 2016 and my place burned down then, so I’m just reliving that a little bit.”

Jody Butz, director of emergency management for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, said the evacuation order covers roughly 6,000 people living in the four neighbourhoods. The fire is roughly eight kilometres away from the landfill, just south of town.

But he stressed that this fire, known as MWF-017, is much different from the one that tore through parts of town eight years ago. This fire is burning through the wreckage of its infamous predecessor, which was known as The Beast. As a result, this fire it does not have as much access to fuel, and it is crawling along the ground rather than torching the forest’s crown.

The wildfire is one of several burning across Western Canada early in the wildfire season. Uncontained wildfires are also spreading in B.C. and Manitoba, some of which have led to power outages, highway closings and air-quality alerts that reached several U.S. states. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre reported a total of 132 active fires burning on Tuesday, mostly in Alberta and B.C.

Western Canada has been experiencing severe drought conditions for months, and government officials and scientists have been warning that extremely dry conditions and warming temperatures will make for a combustible wildfire season. Agriculture Canada’s drought map shows extreme and exceptional drought conditions – the two most severe levels – in pockets of B.C.’s Interior and northeast and in Southern Alberta.

In Manitoba, officials on Tuesday reported a “significant number of active fires” around Flin Flon and The Pas, caused by drought conditions and high winds. This included a fire in Flin Flon that had grown to 316 square kilometres, threatening the cottage subdivisions of Sourdough Bay, Whitefish Lake, Twin Lakes, Schist Lake North and Cranberry Portage. About 550 residents had been ordered to leave Cranberry Portage for The Pas.

In B.C., the Parker Lake fire near Fort Nelson had grown to 84 square kilometres by Tuesday, up from 53 square kilometres Monday morning. About 4,700 people have been placed on evacuation order since its discovery on Friday, including those in Fort Nelson and neighbouring Fort Nelson First Nation.

A day earlier, officials had forecasted westerly winds that could further ignite the dry and volatile fuels in the region; the BC Wildfire Service said Tuesday that conditions were “still very receptive to wildfire and continued growth is expected.”

Resident Jordan Pust saw a plume of smoke out the window of his Fort Nelson home on Friday before the evacuation order was delivered. He drove to Fort St. John that night with his girlfriend and five-year-old son, and is now staying at a hotel with his family and several pets. He’s grateful for the support shown by people in other regions of the province, but he wonders how long that can last.

“What happens when those portions of the province start to have forest fires themselves? Then we’re left standing, watching our community fall apart,” he said.

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.