VANCOUVER, Canada — Dozens of fires raged across western Canada and
California on Friday with little relief expected from a deadly heat wave that
has seen temperatures hit record highs.
اضافة اعلان
Around 1,000 people were evacuated in Canada's British Columbia province
Thursday when a wildfire burnt down 90 percent of a small town that had set a
national high-temperature record for three days running.
Experts say the heat wave on "steroids" was brought on by the
global climate change crisis and has caused several hundred deaths in Canada
and the United States.
The town of Lytton, 250km northeast of Vancouver, "has sustained
structural damage and 90 percent of the village is burned, including the center
of town," local MP Brad Vis said.
Evacuation notices were issued for large swathes of a California county
where a large fire has engulfed nearly 20,000 acres with less than 20 percent
contained by Friday, local authorities reported.
The fire has been blazing for a week after it was ignited by a bolt of
lightning, a government fire alert service said.
Footage from the area showed hills and forests ablaze and the sky filled
with smoke as firefighters rushed to calm the flames. A dozen different
fires have been reported across California, which was hit by some of the worst
wildfires in its history last year.
British Columbia has recorded 62 new fires in the past 24 hours, Premier
John Horgan told a press conference.
"I cannot stress enough how extreme the fire risk is at this time in
almost every part of British Columbia," Horgan said.
'Devastating'
Lytton's 250 residents were evacuated on Wednesday evening, one day after it
set a jaw-dropping Canadian record high temperature of 49.6°C.
The evacuation order was extended Wednesday night to residents of about 100
properties north of Lytton.
"The last 24 hours have been devastating for Lytton residents," Defense
Minister Harjit Sajjan wrote on Twitter, adding that the Canadian armed forces
"are ready to support residents as we move forward in the next
steps."
Provincial authorities have not yet announced any injuries or deaths related
to the fires. A number of the blazes were clustered north of the city of
Kamloops, located about 150km northeast of Lytton.
Environment Canada said in a bulletin issued early Thursday morning for the
Prince George, BC area that "an exceptionally strong ridge of high
pressure over British Columbia will continue to bring record-breaking
temperatures over the next couple of days."
"The duration of this heat wave is concerning as there is little relief
at night with elevated overnight temperatures," it added.
The heat wave continued to move eastward on Thursday into the central
Canadian prairies.
In addition to British Columbia, heat warnings have been issued for the
provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and parts of the Northwest
Territories, and now northern Ontario.
Across the border, the US states of Washington and Oregon have also been
sweltering under record temperatures this week and several hundred sudden
deaths have been reported.
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