A number of remote communities in northern Canada were evacuated by air on Tuesday because wildfires threatened to “flood” roads. The Northwest Territories, a sparsely populated region in the Arctic Circle, declared a state of emergency.
Nearly 168,000 people have had to be evacuated since the start of the unprecedented fire season. In the Northwest Territories, where there are more than 230 active fires, about 15 percent of the population has been evacuated, according to authorities, representing more than 6,000 people.
The regional fire brigade says those villages, which are hundreds of kilometers apart, are difficult to evacuate by road. A contingent of 120 soldiers was also deployed on Tuesday to facilitate air evacuations.
After Yellowknife, the territorial capital, declared a state of emergency over a fire 20 kilometers away, it was the turn of the entire Northwest Territories on Tuesday night.
“I feel so sad when I think of the people of NWT suffering from the devastating wildfires,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on X, formerly Twitter.
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