Wildfires that have already forced thousands of people in the eastern Canadian province of Nova Scotia to evacuate continued to burn on Thursday, causing poor air quality hundreds of miles away as smoke drifted south over the United States border.
Federal aid was on its way, officials said, along with about 100 U.S. firefighters, after local authorities called for outside help.
Canada’s federal government had already provided “airlifts, aerial surveillance, comfortable trailers for the crew and food in the emergency shelters,” Sean Fraser, a cabinet minister and member of parliament from Nova Scotia, said on Twitter on Thursday.
The formal request for assistance allows the government to provide additional resources, he said.
“We are in a crisis in the province and we want and we need all the support we can get,” Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston said at a news conference Wednesday, asking for help.
“Unprecedented resources are being used because these fires are unprecedented.”
Additional kits have already been shipped from Ontario and a dozen water bombers from neighboring regions and the Coast Guard have teamed up to douse the flames and assist with evacuations.
Houston said he has also asked the military for help.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the bushfires “heartbreaking” and promised unlimited support.
As of late Wednesday, 14 wildfires were raging in Nova Scotia, including three out of control. They have so far destroyed or damaged more than 200 homes and other structures, including a wooden bridge, but no injuries have been reported.
Smoke from the wildfires drifted along the Atlantic coast, prompting air quality warnings for the US state of New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania, including the Philadelphia area.
David Meldrum of the Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency, pointing to record high temperatures forecast this week, warned of “a protracted operation” to bring a major blaze northwest of the port city under control that has displaced more than 16,000 residents.
Warm dry weather was forecast on Thursday, with rain predicted for late Friday.
“People are understandably tired, frustrated and scared,” Halifax Mayor Mike Savage said, adding that “some don’t have a home to return to.”
Houston announced a ban on all activities in Nova Scotia’s forests, including hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, using off-road vehicles and logging, and on Wednesday increased the fine for violating the fire ban to about $18,000 ( 25,000 Canadian dollars). .
Government records show a decline in wildfires in Canada since the 1980s, likely due to improved fire prevention.
But the past decade has also seen more disastrous wildfires that scorched far more land and displaced far more people – problems that climate change will only exacerbate.
In recent years, Western Canada has repeatedly been hit by extreme weather, including flooding and mudslides, wildfires that destroyed an entire city, and record high summer temperatures that killed more than 500 people by 2021.
On Tuesday, 800 residents of Fort Chiepwyan in northern Alberta had to be airlifted to safety as fires broke out in the remote hamlet.
Earlier this month, wildfires in Alberta burned nearly a million hectares (2.74 million acres) of forest and grassland, displacing 30,000 people at one point.