Tens of thousands of people have been displaced in Canada following a catastrophic spring wildfire season.
29 000 people were evacuated this past week, and a further 10 000 people were ordered to evacuate Sept Iles in Quebec on Friday, 2 June.
More than 210 fires scorched over 2.7 million hectares of land across the country.
News24 reported Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying ‘this is a scary time for a lot of people from coast to coast to coast.’
Almost 1000 firefighters from South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States have been sent to assist with firefighting efforts. IOL reported that South Africa’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment sent more than 200 firefighters and management on 3 June to assist with the fires in a show of international cooperation.
Minister Barbara Creecy said, ‘I would like to extend my best wishes to the team as you embark on your deployment to Canada to help put out the fires raging in Alberta. You go to Canada to raise the South African flag and share your expertise and camaraderie with colleagues from other Canadian provinces to save lives, homes, businesses, and large swathes of vegetation.
‘We are proud of the fact that South Africa is again able to assist Canadian firefighting teams in their battle to bring the wildfires under control. The extensive experience and training of these firefighters will significantly enhance efforts to effectively suppress and manage the wildfires in Alberta.’
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston said in a briefing that ‘weather has favoured the fires all week, not the firefighters, We’re hopeful that this will soon change.’
He said that ‘many, many lives [have been] turned upside down by fires,’ some of whom have responded to the fires are evacuees themselves. ‘Though all this despair, zero deaths, zero missing persons, zero serious injuries.’
Pictures: GettyImages
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