Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew says the province is playing the waiting game as it looks to get thousands of wildfire evacuees into hotels.
Kinew told reporters Friday that more than 18,000 people are already in hotels or are staying with family, but many remain in congregate shelters.
He said getting those evacuees into private accommodations is tricky because many hotel rooms are being reserved for people with “intense” medical issues.
“We just have to do a balancing act,” Kinew said. “At this point, the big-picture challenge around rooms has largely been addressed.
“It’s now just about the daily balancing act of triaging people coming in and people who are already in shelters and matching them up with rooms.”
Kinew said fires in northern Manitoba near the city of Flin Flon have merged into a single massive blaze that is more than 3,000 square kilometres. There are 27 active fires in Manitoba, eight of which are out of control.
The City of Flin Flon, on social media, said that no structures have been lost in the city or in nearby Creighton, Sask. All 5,000 Flin Flon residents along with another thousand in the surrounding vicinity have been out for more than a week.
Get breaking National news
“Winds in the area are now blowing from the south, resulting in heavy smoke and fire moving towards the south side of Flin Flon,” the city said in an update Friday.
The city added that fire protection, including sprinklers, is set up and firefighters would work to protect property.
- Iranian Canadians and others watch and worry after U.S. strikes on nuclear sites
- More Canadians want to join the military, but current members keep leaving
- John McCallum dead at 75: A political veteran of ‘good humour and grace’
- ‘There’s no protection’: Canadian Sikh leaders face threats, organization says
Provincial fire officials said evacuations have been completed at First Nations at Pukatawagan and Cross Lake.
More than 30,000 people in Manitoba and Saskatchewan have been forced to flee their homes ahead of scores of wildfires in recent days. Both provinces declared states of emergency last week.
Smoke from the fires has drifted as far east as Newfoundland and Labrador and as far south as Florida.
In Saskatchewan, crews are battling 25 active blazes. Officials have said roughly 400 structures have burned. The major evacuation zones are in and around La Ronge, where 7,000 have been forced out.
Premier Scott Moe has resisted calls by the Opposition NDP to bring in the military to combat wildfires, with his office saying that the province needs water bombers and firefighters — resources the Canadian Armed Forces can’t provide.
In northern Alberta, approximately 1,300 residents of the town of Swan Hills were allowed to return to their homes Thursday, about a week after fleeing from a wildfire.
But about 340 kilometres west in the County of Grande Prairie, people in the Municipal District of Opportunity were ordered out. Earlier this week, officials said roughly half of the structures in Chipewyan Lake had been destroyed by a wildfire. Chipewyan Lake has 75 people.
Comments