Those affected have doubled in the last 24 hours and more than 35,000 people have already had to leave their homes in western Canada due to an unprecedented wave of forest fires that threaten several cities in the west and north of the country.
The seriousness of the situation throughout Canada, where some 1,052 forest fires are active, forced Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this Saturday to convene for the second time in 48 hours the Incident Response Group, which is made up of ministers and senior officials. who have powers in the crisis.
Meanwhile, David Eby, prime minister of the province of British Columbia, in the west of the country, declared this Saturday at a press conference that "the current situation is discouraging." On Friday, Eby declared a state of emergency across the province where 388 wildfires are active.
Eby added that more than 35,000 people have had to be evacuated and another 30,000 are under alert to receive orders to leave their homes at any time.
The most affected area is central British Columbia where the towns of West Kelowna and Kelowna, with a combined population of 160,000, are threatened by the blazes.
The high number of people displaced from their homes forced the authorities this Saturday to ban tourism in the areas most affected by the fires to free up hotel rooms in which to accommodate the evacuees as well as the personnel fighting the flames.
"Temporary accommodation in the areas I have mentioned is no longer possible for non-essential visitors," British Columbia Emergencies Minister Bowinn Ma said.
The situation is similar in the north of the country, in the Northwest Territories, where authorities on Wednesday ordered the evacuation of the 20,000 inhabitants of the region's capital, Yellowknife, which is surrounded by four forest fires.
Some 19,000 people have already left the city, where almost half of the entire population of the Northwest Territories lives, a region with an area of 1.34 million square kilometers, 2.6 times the size of Spain.
Although it was initially feared that the flames would reach Yellowknife this Saturday, the change in weather conditions, with the drop in temperatures and the rain that fell overnight, are helping to contain the fires.
But the mayor of Yellowknife, Rebecca Alty, warned this Saturday that the situation continues to be very unstable and dangerous, so she asked the inhabitants of the city not to return. "There are still difficult days ahead and the threat in the area remains," Alty said.
