Ottawa, Aug 22 (Rpresentative) Over 27,000 individuals are under mandatory evacuation order in Canada’s British Columbia and 35,000 more are on evacuation alert, the provincial Minister of Emergency Management Bowinn Ma said on Monday. “As of this morning, there are more than 27,000 people under evacuation order, and more than 35,000 on evacuation alert. This highlights the scale of the challenge that our emergency management teams, and first responders are facing. Their coordinated efforts have been nothing short of remarkable. The wildfire situation continues to be extremely serious, impacting 10s of 1000s of people,” Ma said during a BC Wildfire update. The minister stressed that people living in areas that have received evacuation orders cannot choose to stay behind and must leave in the shortest possible delays – “This isn’t a suggestion. It is the law,” she said. BC’s Minister of Forests Bruce Ralston said there currently are 386 wildfires burning in the province, fourteen of them being fires of note posing a direct threat to public safety.
Ralston added that roughly 3500 personnel remain actively engaged in battling the raging wildfires on a provincial scale, further noting that 100 Mexican firefighters are expected to arrive on Wednesday, and an additional 200 South African ones in the coming days. On Friday, British Columbia declared a provincial state of emergency over the dangers posed by the growing number of wildfires and their proximity to populated agglomerations, as well as to ensure the authorities’ ability to assist communities in need. According to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, as of Sunday there were 1044 active fires, 657 of which were deemed out of control, with the seasonal total standing at 5815, having burnt over 15 million hectares of land. Canada’s 2023 wildfire season has been declared as the worst on record in the country’s history.