British Columbia wildfires intensify, doubling evacuations to over 35,000

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Canada's western province of British Columbia intensified further on Saturday, doubling the number of people under an evacuation order to 35,000 from a day earlier, as authorities warned of difficult days ahead. The province declared a state of emergency on Friday, to access temporary authoritative powers to tackle fire-related risks, as out-of-control fires ripped through interior British Columbia and partially shut down some sections of a key transit route between the Pacific coast and the rest of western Canada, and destroyed many properties. «The current situation is grim,» Premier Daniel Eby told reporters on Saturday, saying some 35,000 people are under an evacuation order, and a further 30,000 were under evacuation alert.

Eby said the province is in dire need of shelter for evacuees and firefighters and ordered a ban on non-essential travel to make more temporary accommodation available. B.C. had experienced strong winds and dry lightning in the past few days due to a cold mass of air interacting with hot air built-up in the sultry summer.

That intensified existing forest fires and ignited new ones. «We are still in some critically dry conditions, and are still expecting difficult days ahead,» said Jerrad Schroeder, deputy fire centre manager at the Kamloops Fire Centre. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convened a meeting of key ministers and senior officials on Saturday to discuss wildfires.

The Incident Response Group, which met for the second time this week, agreed to make «additional resources available» to both British Columbia and the Northwest Territories. By Friday, an out-of-control fire in southern B.C. grew more than a hundredfold in 24 hours and forced more than 2,400 properties to be evacuated.