Photo: The Canadian Press The wildfire forcing thousands to evacuate from a northeast British Columbia town has doubled again in size as the blaze grows merely a few kilometres west of city limits. The Aurora Borealis shines overhead of a B.C. Conservation Officer Service vehicle near the junction of highways 97 and 77, as a wildfire burns in the background near Fort Nelson, B.C., in a Saturday, May 11, 2024, handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship,
The Canadian Press – May 14, 2024 / 5:42 am
More and more evacuation orders are being issued in northeastern British Columbia due to wildfires.
The latest came late Monday night, when the Peace River Regional District issued an evacuation order affecting residents around Doig River 206.
It’s a small community about 60 kilometres northeast of Fort St. John.
The regional district says people should be grabbing what they needing and going to an evacuation centre in Fort St. John, where help is waiting.
This comes as pressure to get residents affecting by wildfires in the area increases, so much so that in Fort Nelson, the mayor of the area says they’ve been calling holdouts directly.
Forecasts called for winds late Monday into Tuesday to blow the Parker Lake wildfire toward Fort Nelson — a risk that has triggered the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality and the Fort Nelson First Nation to expand mandatory evacuation orders to a wider swath of northeastern B.C.
As of early Tuesday morning, the fire had swelled to over 84 square kilometres, marking significant growth from Monday morning.
Northern Rockies Regional Municipality Mayor Rob Fraser says the municipality’s emergency operations centre called as many people as they had phone numbers for, and managed to convince some of the people who’ve remained to leave.
Fraser says he suspects about 50 of what he calls “civilians” are still in Fort Nelson, a community of about 4,700 people, but he says there’s plenty of other essential and critical staff still in town.
“This is really going to be weather dependent, and so far the weather has been holding with us,” Fraser said in a video posted to Facebook on Monday evening, where he explained that winds Sunday night kept the flames from moving any closer into town.
He also said the electricity and water remain on in Fort Nelson, noting that power is of particular concern for evacuees who are worried about their homes.
One drawback of evacuating non-essential people, he said, was that it was becoming challenging for essential staff such as firefighters to get food.
