A water bomber drops water onto a wildfire burning in the Paddy's Pond area just outside St. John's, N.L., on Wednesday. Premier John Hogan says thick smoke and fumes have prevented officials from assessing the full extent of the recent damage.Elling Lien/The Canadian Press
Thousands of people in St. John’s have been told to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice, as rapidly deteriorating wildfires in Newfoundland and Labrador threaten urban centres.
Crews in the province’s capital are employing water bombers to slow the growth of raging flames near the Trans-Canada Highway, but the fire remained out of control late Wednesday, with at least 20,000 residents facing possible evacuations.
“It’s unnerving, really, because you don’t know. It’s living in the unknown,” Olga Boland, who lives in Paradise, an area in St. John’s close to the nearly 250-hectare fire, said in an interview.
Many in Ms. Boland’s neighbourhood have been ordered to leave their homes, while those in other parts have been asked to be prepared for emergency orders.
“It’s an uncomfortable feeling,” added her sister-in-law, Patty Boland, as the two of them shopped at a Costco, located in a suburb under alert.
“We’re not in the area where we are being so badly affected. But when I think about the areas of Newfoundland that are being devastated, it’s absolutely heartbreaking. It’s just terrible.”
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Earlier in the day, Premier John Hogan told reporters at a briefing that four other significant wildfires in the province are continuing to destroy homes and properties.
He said thick smoke and fumes have prevented officials from assessing the full extent of the recent damage, and that at least 3,000 people have already been forced from their homes. The largest of the fires has reached about 6,400 hectares in size.
With forecasts showing heavy winds, extreme heat warnings and dry conditions, Mr. Hogan said fire behaviour is expected to be hazardous in the coming days for almost the entirety of the province.
“As this continues to get worse over the last few days, it’s very clear that all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians’ level of anxiety continues to rise,” the Premier said.
“There is a lot happening. There is a lot of serious, hard, dangerous work being done.”
Canada has been experiencing some of the most destructive wildfires in recent decades this summer. Across the country, more than 715 wildfires are aflame, with at least 155 of them deemed out of control.
The fires have been largely spreading on the Prairies, where Manitoba has extended its second provincewide state of emergency this summer and large swaths of Saskatchewan remain evacuated.
Now, a severe lack of precipitation and sweltering heat are also causing flames to proliferate on the East Coast.
In Nova Scotia, which has banned most summertime activities in wooded areas, Annapolis County residents in the Godfrey Lake area have been placed on alert. Firefighters in Halifax, meanwhile, battled a conflagration that appeared to have been mostly held by late Wednesday, as the province responded to at least 16 wildfires that started since Tuesday.
At the same time, New Brunswick residents in Moncton were told to remain prepared for evacuations. Two wildfires in that province are unable to be contained – one of which, north of Miramichi, has grown to reach 1,358 hectares.
St. John’s Mayor Danny Breen said he has never seen weather conditions in Atlantic Canada like this summer, describing 37 C days after a winter that did not provide the region with much snow.
“It is definitely an anomaly,” he said in an interview, pointing to dry and browning grass in the city. “To be honest with you, outside of asking for rain, I don’t really know what else we could really ask for.”
Mr. Breen said the province will need to adjust to a changing climate: “Weather patterns that we’ve seen in the past are no longer the weather patterns that we’re seeing into the future.”
Evacuee Denise Patey, speaking near Admiral’s Academy on Conception Bay Highway – a K-7 school that has been converted into an emergency wildfire shelter – recounted her experience in an interview, her breathing getting faster as she went through the details.
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Ms. Patey, 51, was at work last week when she found out that her home in Holyrood was in an area mandated to flee. She quickly drove from Green’s Drug Mart, where she is a client-care specialist, trying not to panic.
But when she got in her car, she said she felt paralyzed: “I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what to do.”
She called her husband, who was on his way. She worried about her son, who works nearby at the Holyrood marina, and their three little dogs at home.
Eventually, she took her belongings and went to her sister’s place in the Kelligrews neighbourhood. But she couldn’t properly sleep for days, troubled by thoughts of not knowing whether she would have a home to go back to.
“It was a very stressful week,” she said. “It took a lot of my sense of safety away.”
Back at work now, Ms. Patey has seen customers stock up on medication: “You hear the anxiety in people’s voices when they come in.”
About a 20-minute drive away, in Southlands, Glenda Brushett, 44, and her husband, Dion, 45, have packed up their emergency bags with essentials.
“Tried to keep it minimal. But it’s hard to pick and choose when you have a house full of memories,” Ms. Brushett said. Her family will move to her mother’s home in Mount Pearl should evacuations be mandated.
Police in Atlantic provinces are investigating the recent fires, some of which they said may have been started by human activity, including arson.
At the briefing in St. John’s, Mr. Hogan said six water bombers, including two from Ontario, are working to contain the flames at different parts of the province. A helicopter is also en route from Alberta.
He announced a ban on all-terrain vehicles on forested roads, reversing a previous decision when he said it wasn’t a good idea for people who live and work in the woods.
“What’s changed is fires continue to happen,” he said. “We need to make sure that no further fires crop up because we only have so many assets.”
Mr. Hogan said that in a call with Prime Minister Mark Carney late Tuesday, the federal government also committed to provide logistical support for the province, including for evacuation centres and transportation.
“We will get through this,” the Premier said. “This will end. We will be okay.”
Yumna Iftikhar is special to The Globe and Mail