Canada.- The Canadian authorities ordered this Friday the evacuation of thousands of people in several towns in the west of the country due to the rapid advance of one of the more than 1,000 forest fires that are active in Canada.
Thousands of inhabitants of the cities of Kelowna and West Kelowna, in the province of British Columbia, received an order early on Friday to evacuate their homes due to the advance of the flames of a forest fire that increased its size by 100% in just 24 hours.
The city of Kelowna, with a population of about 140,000 people and located about 300 kilometers east of Vancouver, declared a state of emergency on Friday after the destruction of several buildings on its outskirts.
The evacuations also affect small towns in the interior of British Columbia and several indigenous communities.
The Canadian Weather Service warned this Friday that it expects strong winds in the interior of British Columbia that will increase the danger of fires in the region.
Meanwhile, in the north of Canada, in the Northwest Territories, thousands of people are still waiting in the city of Yellowknife to be evacuated by air.
Authorities in the Northwest Territories, one of three Canadian Arctic regions, have ordered the evacuation of Yellowknife’s 20,000 residents as the flames of several wildfires surrounding the city threaten to evacuate.
On Thursday, 10 flights evacuated 1,500 people and this Friday another 22 flights are scheduled.
Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair told a news conference Friday that military planes are evacuating patients from Yellowknife hospitals.
Canadian authorities estimate that more than half of the 45,000 inhabitants of the Northwest Territories, a region with an area of 1.34 million square kilometers, 2.6 times the size of Spain, have had to be evacuated in recent hours.
