Tag: fire

Wildfire evacuees’ return delayed as homes no longer habitable

This article was written by Temur Durrani and was published in the Globe & Mail on September 13, 2025. T

A helicopter crew works on a wildfire as another is shown flying by in Northern Manitoba during a helicopter tour in the surrounding area of Flin Flon in June.

More than two months after her entire Northern Manitoba community was forced to flee from a raging wildfire this summer, Beverly Baker has no idea when she will be allowed to go back home.

The flames near Leaf Rapids, a scenic town with a population of 350, have been under control since last month. Evacuees were being prepared to return this week. But on Friday, residents were told they will have to wait even more – at least until October – because their homes are no longer habitable.

According to health officials, the properties are considered a biohazard. Manitoba Hydro cut off power to Leaf Rapids on Aug. 1, leaving rotting food and black mould.

Residents, however, were not made aware of those concerns until moments before many of them were about to travel on nearly 13-hour bus rides and shuttles from Winnipeg, just under 1,000 kilometres away from the community.

“We’re living in a constant state of anxiety. And nobody is listening because a majority of us are First Nations peoples,” Ms. Baker told The Globe and Mail. “How is it our fault that this fire happened and it became mandatory to leave?”

Hailing from Granville Lake, also known as Pickerel Narrows First Nation, Ms. Baker and her family of 13 have been in a Winnipeg hotel since early July, when evacuations were first ordered in Leaf Rapids.

Many residents of the remote town along Churchill River are also from Granville Lake, while others are band members of nearby O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation and Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation.

Leaf Rapids, on Friday, extended its localized state of emergency until Oct. 4 because of the uninhabitable homes. Officials asked residents to fill out authorization forms if they wish to have their refrigerators removed or disposed, noting that “perishable food left in them are a biohazard.”

The town posted on social media that anyone in breach of the evacuations may be arrested, issued a fine for at least $1,296 and escorted away.

Ervin Bighetty, manager of the Leaf Rapids Co-op, finds it hard to forget the stench. He was back in town a few days ago, working with suppliers to have enough food in his store for the returning community, when he saw the vile spoilage.

“There are infestations of flies,” Mr. Bighetty said by phone from Thompson, Man. “It’s really as grim as it gets.”

Raymond Meunier, who has also been evacuated in Winnipeg, said waiting for updates is the most frustrating part.

“Even before this week, we’ve been asking not just the town for answers, but also the federal and provincial governments,” he said.

Currently in his second hotel for evacuees, Mr. Meunier recently spent his 50th birthday away from most of his family. “I’ve been getting any updates about my home from people who are scared to even say their names out loud because they’ll be given a fine they just can’t afford. It’s like the town is hiding things,” he said.

“I remember when many of us Indigenous people moved to Leaf Rapids a few decades ago,” he added. “It was mostly Caucasian people there, promising the future. Now, it’s crickets from those in charge because we’re a larger population there.”

Town officials declined to comment.

Leaf Rapids has not had a mayor or council for years. It has been managed by provincial administrators after several council members resigned in 2019 because of what they described as internal mismanagement and alleged misappropriation of town-related funds.

In a statement to The Globe, Manitoba government spokesperson Caedmon Malowany said the safety of residents in Leaf Rapids is a “top priority.”

“But unfortunately more work needs to be done to prepare the community for the safe return of its residents,” he wrote. “This additional time will allow Manitoba to provide more support for returning residents.”

Manitoba Hydro spokesperson Peter Chura said the Crown corporation has restored power for the majority of its customers in the area.

He said the outage was caused by “wildfires that damaged or destroyed 12 wood pole structures on the transmission line serving the community.” Hydro crews began their repair work after they obtained clearance from the Manitoba Wildfire Service.

“We discovered some damage to underground electrical infrastructure in the community likely caused by heavy machinery working in the area during firefighting efforts,” Mr. Chura wrote in an e-mail.

Power was back by Sept. 9 after the repairs, he added.

But residents in Leaf Rapids told The Globe the service remains patchy.

“This kind of thing has been happening for a while now,” Mr. Meunier said. “They say one thing, and it’s another fact on the ground. We’re used to landlines because we have no cell service. We’re back to spotty hydro in modern-day Canada, where we have no safe drinking water, our community living under boil-water advisories. But everything’s fixed, isn’t it?”

The province declined to say whether it will help the community build back their homes or provide residents with new fridges.

“We are working with the local leadership of Leaf Rapids to determine what those needs are,” Manitoba spokesperson Mr. Malowany noted.

Federal Northern and Arctic Affairs Minister Rebecca Chartrand, whose Churchill-Keewatinook Aski riding includes Leaf Rapids, did not respond to requests for comment. She is hosting an online session next week to provide more information about the effects of recent wildfires.

Manitoba bore the brunt of this year’s wildfire season in Canada, declaring two separate provincewide states of emergency in May and July, the latter of which – after being extended for weeks – ended in late August. More than 2.1 million hectares of land was scorched across the Prairie province, with some areas still burning.

Houses feared to be des­troyed in N.L. blazes

Thick smoke has pre­ven­ted offi­cials from sur­vey­ing toll

This article was written by the Canadian Press and was published in the Toronto Star on August 12, 2025.

SMALL POINT­ADAM’S COVEBLACKHEAD­BROAD COVE, N.L. He has no offi­cial con­firm­a­tion, but Luo Xu is cer­tain his fam­ily’s evac­u­ated home in east­ern New­found­land has been des­troyed by wild­fire.

On Sat­urday night, he watched live images from a secur­ity cam­era show­ing smoke and then flames filling the screen before going blank.

“I don’t think any words could ever be able to describe my feel­ings about watch­ing our own house burn­ing,” Xu said on Monday.

At the time, there were seven act­ive wild­fires in the province — five in New­found­land and two in Lab­rador. Of the four burn­ing out of con­trol, the fire that entered West­ern Bay was by far the largest. As of Sat­urday, about 3,000 people had been told to leave their homes.

Xu said it appears his home, which he shared with his wife and two young chil­dren, burned down Sat­urday around 6 p.m. “The cam­era sits inside the house, right by the front win­dow, so I know it’s gone. Even if it’s not fully gone, it’s badly burned. It will be a total loss.”

Pro­vin­cial offi­cials said Monday thick smoke in the com­munit­ies along the north­west­ern shore of Con­cep­tion Bay, like West­ern Bay, has pre­ven­ted them from being able to count the num­ber of des­troyed homes and other struc­tures.

A week ago, Xu and his fam­ily were told to evac­u­ate their home for the second time this wild­fire sea­son. They were told to leave back in May when an earlier wild­fire threatened the area.

Xu and his fam­ily are now stay­ing in the neigh­bour­ing town of Car­bonear.

“The evac­u­ation centre, it’s like a big fam­ily,” he said. “We all go there and have a little chat and just try to be pos­it­ive. We will try to get through this dis­aster together.”

Mean­while, pro­vin­cial fire duty officer Mark Lawlor said the fire in ques­tion star­ted over a week ago near the coastal town of King­ston, N.L., and has since expan­ded to about 52 square kilo­metres.

At Ochre Pit Cove, about 13 kilo­metres north of King­ston, the local Red Ochre Café is now a fire­fight­ing com­mand post. Café owner Ray Dwyer said most of his neigh­bours are wor­ried about their homes.

“It’s scary for every­body,” he said. “Every­one’s evac­u­ated and they don’t know how their prop­er­ties are. Half the north shore here is scorched. It’s strange when you go up the road and there’s not a per­son, not an animal. It’s just pretty des­ol­ate.”

The pic­tur­esque ham­let was evac­u­ated last Monday.

Dwyer, who has man­aged the café for six years, said his 13 local employ­ees are out of a job, and elec­tri­city in the area has been cut off.

“I had five great big freez­ers full and I have to go throw it away,” he said. “The worst part about it is my employ­ees have no income. It’s got me killed that I can’t help them.”

Premier John Hogan told a brief­ing in St. John’s that crews bat­tling the King­ston fire were deal­ing with the same high winds and soar­ing tem­per­at­ures that helped spread the fire on the week­end.

“The fire­fight­ers and heavy equip­ment are con­tinu­ing to work … to expand the fuel break on the south­ern edge of the fire,” he said.

The premier and his offi­cials were unable to say how many homes or other build­ings had been lost to the fires. And they could not provide an update on the num­ber of evacu­ees still out of their homes.

Hogan said two addi­tional water bombers from Ontario were expec­ted to arrive Monday. And he con­firmed that the Cana­dian Armed Forces would be increas­ing the num­ber of its fire­fight­ers from 40 to 80 by Tues­day.

Fast-spreading Newfoundland blazes leave residents wrestling with devastating losses

This article was written by Dakshana Bascaramurty and was published in the Globe & Mail on August 11, 2025.

Four blazes happening across the province with almost 3,000 people under evacuation order

When her neighbours came knocking at her door last Monday afternoon telling her to evacuate, Barbara Watson was calm. Too calm. From her church-conversion house in Small Point-Adam’s Cove-Blackhead-Broad Cove, N.L., she could see smoke in the distance, yes, but assumed it was a little fire in the woods that would be easy to extinguish.

She grabbed her small crossbody bag, some freshly washed laundry and her asthma inhaler and headed to a friend’s place in Western Bay, a 10-minute drive away, assuming the evacuation order would be lifted in a day or two.

But by nightfall, she looked in the direction of her house and saw tall grapefruit-coloured plumes of smoke and the bright blaze of fire beneath them. Rumours circulated on Facebook about whose houses had been burned down and whose were still standing. An hour later, the evacuation order spread to residents across a swath of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Bay de Verde peninsula, including Western Bay. As the fire kept spreading, Ms. Watson and her friend kept moving. They didn’t go to sleep until 5 a.m.

On Thursday, while in an evacuation shelter, Ms. Watson came across a surreal photo on a community Facebook group showing her own house, reduced to grey rubble. A stranger had posted it.

Ms. Watson’s is one of many homes lost in the four wildfires blazing across the province. The largest fire originated in Kingston in the Conception Bay North area and had grown to nearly 50 square kilometres by Sunday, Premier John Hogan said in an evening press briefing. Almost 3,000 people are under an evacuation order.

The province’s four water bombers as well as five helicopters and a 50-person ground crew have been working to extinguish the Kingston fire. Aerial support has also been provided by crews from Quebec and New Brunswick. Ontario had initially promised two water bombers but then later held on to them to contend with their own fires.

Wildfires are burning across the country. In the last few days, heatwaves in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia have brought temperatures as high as 37 C. In the Maritimes, the risk for wildfires remains high because of persistent dry conditions. Nova Scotia has imposed a sweeping ban on activities in wooded areas, and provincewide burn bans are in effect in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, the latter of which has two out-of-control fires.

While Mr. Hogan shared Sunday evening that one of this week’s fires in Holyrood has been classified as controlled, and another near Happy Valley-Goose Bay was extinguished, he struggled to find much optimism in the overall situation.

“You can’t fool yourself and think it’s going to be over tomorrow with the forecast, the heat, the lack of rain certainty up until Thursday or Friday,” he said.

Many of the evacuees of the Kingston fire have taken shelter down the bay in Carbonear, the largest municipality in the Conception Bay North area.

Carbonear Mayor Frank Butt estimates about 1,000 evacuees have poured into his town of 5,000 in the last week, some sleeping at the evacuation shelter set up at a school, others taken in by community members who have offered up their couches and spare bedrooms.

On Sunday, the fire was heading north, away from Carbonear, but Mr. Butt said his community was bracing for the winds to change and spread the fire in their direction.

Evacuees have complained of delays in finding out the status of their homes. Some have watched their houses burn down through the livefeed from their doorbell or trail camera.

Though Ms. Watson knew through the photo she saw that her house was gone on Monday, it wasn’t until Saturday that town officials confirmed it to her, which has slowed down the insurance claim process.

This past week, she’s bounced between a hotel and a friend’s home, and gone to the emergency shelter at a school in Carbonear for meals and company – though being around others in pain has been overwhelming. On Sunday morning, while eating breakfast, she watched a couple who had just learned their house had burned down dissolve into sobs beside her.

She often looks at the now-useless house key on her keychain, unable to absorb what’s been lost.

She had bought the church in 2017 and spent six years converting it into her dream residence: Stripping the ancient green carpet, repurposing the wood from the balcony pews to make stairs.

“To say that I was in love with my house would be a perfect description,” she said.

But more than the structure, she’s most devastated to have potentially lost her most precious possessions, which she believes were locked in the pantry: A hair clipping, photos and the autopsy report for her son Tyler, who died in 1987, the same year he was born.

“What can I do about this, other than letting it totally overwhelm me? Even the thought of losing my son’s things that I’ve kept with me. Things are just things, but not those things. Those are Tyler’s.”

Crews hampered by a water system unequipped for current fires’ scale

This article was written by Patrick White and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 10, 2025.

Firefighters in Los Angeles are facing a dire scenario that has become increasingly common around the world as urban areas grapple with the growing threat of wildfire: a lack of water.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times and other media outlets reported that firefighters in the fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades region hooked up to hydrants only to find there was little or no water pressure.

The water-scarcity issue sparked a round of blame among Angelenos and elected representatives, with presidentelect Donald Trump falsely claiming that Governor Gavin Newsom’s fish conservation efforts were responsible for the lack of water for firefighting efforts.

But fire experts, as well as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, note that municipal water systems, including in her city, were never designed to repel wildfires of the scale now scorching the city.

“We all know that this has been an unprecedented event,” she said Thursday at a news conference. “We also know fire hydrants are not constructed to deal with this type of massive devastation.”

The typical hydrant system is designed to provide enough water for a contained building fire lasting a few hours. The U.S. Fire Code states that hydrants should provide at least 1,900 litres a minute. To ensure continuous pressure, many municipalities use subterranean cisterns to store adequate water.

Los Angeles has about 114 such tanks spread across the city – including three Palisades-area cisterns that hold about 3.8 million litres each. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said on Wednesday that all cisterns were filled prior to the fire as part of emergency-preparedness protocols.

Extreme demand on those tanks exceeded the rate at which they could be replenished, the department said in a news release, limiting flow to some hydrants, especially at higher elevations.

Mark Petrella, director of Los Angeles County Public Works, said on Thursday that waterbombers were drawing from the city’s reservoirs, which remained full despite the extreme demand.

“A firefight with multiple fire hydrants drawing water from the municipal water system for several hours is just not sustainable,” he said during a news conference. “That’s why the air support is so important.”

That air support was vital to slowing down the fires on Thursday. High winds earlier in the week had grounded aircraft.

“If we don’t have water, we find water,” said Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, who has been attacked on social media for the lack of water.

Water shortages have come to be expected during wildfires around the globe, which often flare up in drought-stricken regions and can knock out vital water infrastructure.

The L.A. scenario is reminiscent of the devastating 2023 wildfire that destroyed Lahaina on the island of Maui, where fire crews could not find hydrants with adequate water pressure. An analysis by drinking-water engineer Robert Sowby found that a combination of power outages, leaks from fire-damaged structures and a scarcity of emergency water supplies led to the shortage.

Major firestorms can have cascading effects on infrastructure that entirely knock out water systems, Dr. Sowby told The Globe and Mail in an interview. “In Maui, it was intense wind that knocked down the power lines that started a fire that then knocked out power to the water system,” he said.

“I don’t know that that’s happening in Los Angeles yet, but we may see some cascading effects of infrastructure failures because of this widespread fire.”

But considering the speed with which both the Maui and Los Angeles fires moved, hydrant pressure could be a moot point, said Alan Westhaver, a wildfire-management specialist.

“No conceivable fire-suppression response (or amount of water – except heavy rain) can effectively or safely outduel wildland fires of this intensity,” he said in an e-mail exchange with The Globe.

Mr. Westhaver co-created FireSmart, a program that educates Canadians on protecting communities from wildfire. As bigger fires encroach on towns and cities, the focus should shift to making properties and structures more resistant to ignition.

Water-supply issues, he said, are “another distraction that gets in the way of implementing effective actions that will reduce losses under these severe circumstances.”

Facing the new reality of urban wildfires

This editorial was written and published by the Globe & Mail on December 5, 2024.

Wildfires are not just a problem for rural areas. They’re increasingly a problem for cities, but the scale of the threat doesn’t appear to be sinking in. After the small Alberta community of Slave Lake burned in 2011, local fire crews were eager to share lessons they’d learned. By the time much bigger Fort McMurray burned five years later, they hadn’t found a lot of people willing to listen.

Fast forward to 2023, when fire crews in Halifax lacked proper training, equipment and experience to tackle a blaze in the city’s outskirts.

Those sorts of areas – partly rural and often heavily wooded, they’re called the “wildland urban interface” – pose the greatest wildfire risk to cities. It’s there that municipal crews more accustomed to doing medical calls and tackling house fires face profound new challenges.

A recent report from the nation’s fire chiefs makes clear just how unprepared many crews are for that challenge.

Its survey of fire departments reveals that only 18 per cent of those that responded have received the funding or equipment needed to tackle wildfires. One-third don’t have access to adequate training dedicated to fighting wildfires. And about one-third of fire departments have not been able to fulfill mutual-aid agreements that allow jurisdictions to pool firefighting resources.

The report did not have an answer for why mutual aid agreements could not be fulfilled. But it’s not hard to imagine a link between a lack of resources, a lack of training and an inability to help.

This should be a wake-up call.

Although the 2023 fire season may not be top of mind as winter settles in, the threat is not gone. The incidence and severity of wildfires may fluctuate from year to year, but the long-term trends are increasingly grim. Climate change is creating the conditions for fire seasons to get worse. In simple terms, a warmer forest is drier and more likely to ignite. When it does, it burns hotter and bigger.

As Canada both warms and its cities continue to build in the wildland urban interface, this scenario is likely to recur in particularly dangerous ways.

The fire chiefs warn in their report that more trucks are needed, because so much equipment is being used to respond to climate-related emergencies. They also expect the number of people doing double-duty fighting both forest fires and urban blazes “to increase as the wildland urban interface increases.”

This is dangerous and vital work. Firefighters cannot be asked to do it without proper resources.

The report makes the case that the federal government should contribute. But while Ottawa could play a coordinating role, outside of national parks wildfires are the responsibility of provinces and territories. And spending by these governments on fire control has been mixed.

British Columbia invested after record-breaking fires ravaged the province in 2017. Annual spending is up four times and the province has established a year-round, rather than seasonal, firefighting service, in part to tackle so-called zombie fires that can smoulder through the off-season and flare up unexpectedly.

Over the same period, Alberta has cut fire budgets and reduced lookout numbers and firefighter capabilities.

Regional shortfalls can to some degree be papered over. It would be ruinously expensive for every jurisdiction to budget for the worst-case scenario, so provinces share resources as needed. But that approach is being strained. In 2023, Canada had to borrow firefighters from a dozen foreign countries, using crews from as far away as South Korea. This year was less severe – notwithstanding the devastation in Jasper, Alta. – but the country still had all domestic resources committed for six weeks of the summer.

When blazes threaten cities, municipal fire departments are also pressed into action. Provinces must give them the resources and training to do so.

Firefighters can also learn from each other. In his book Fire Weather, on the blaze that destroyed part of Fort McMurray, John Vaillant notes that crews transformed within hours from a hierarchical organization to a loose collection of people simply doing the best they could.

That kind of ad hoc response is clearly no longer acceptable. Ottawa, the provinces and municipalities need to organize themselves for what’s to come.