Fires are ‘burning deeper with more intensity’ in the Northwest Territories

N.W.T. Wildfire Information Officer Mike Westwick gives an update on the wildfire moving closer to the hamlet of Fort Providence, N.W.T.

An evacuation order has been issued for the Northwest Territories town of Fort Providence.

Area resident Britney Nadli told CTV News Channel that she was one of the last members to leave the community, on Sunday around 6:00 p.m., local time.

A volunteer helper, Nadli said she registered over 100 people for the evacuation and helped connect them with territorial government transportation out of the community.

“My job was to keep everybody calm and then organize the elders and the families to get on the bus,” she said.

“The smoke has been pretty bad, it’s going on and off. There’s days when we got wind — it will clear up for a few days, then the smoke will come back. The living conditions up north, with all the smoke, has been pretty hard.”

Mike Westwick is a wildfire information officer, with the government of Northwest Territories. In an interview with CTV News Channel Monday, he said that for now, the wildfire has yet to reach Fort Providence.

“As the smoke cleared this morning, it’s a little bit less than 900 metres away from the community. So, it did not encroach on the community through the evening, which is really good news for the community there,” he said.

“Our team is going to be continuing to work to strengthen defences within the community, to run those water cannons and sprinklers that we’ve set up, to work with heavy equipment to bolster fuel-free areas, and to find opportunities to strategically attack more of that flame front that’s still very close to the community in many parts, stretching across almost 10 kilometres of fire line there. A lot of people working hard to keep that community safe.”

Westwick says that key to the fire defence effort is “point protection,” a strategy where a selection of individual locations are prioritized, instead of tackling the entire front at once.

“We’re not going to get all the way around it, that is the reality; it’s far too large,” He told CTV News.

At last count, the fire covers over 80,000 hectares of land, an area roughly 17,000 hectares larger than the City of Toronto.

The fire had previously been pushed over 10 kilometres in a single night, Westwick told CTV News Channel. He said his team has adapted to such extreme fires.

“(This is) kind of what we’ve been facing in the N.W.T., in the third year of drought. With fires that are burning deeper with more intensity and that are much more difficult to control, but our team is standing tall in the face of those challenges, as we have all summer. “

There’s a reception centre set up in Hay River, where Westwick says he is confident that they will be prepared to take care of Fort Providence’s evacuees

“They’re gonna be treating them good there,” he said.

Canada’s Interagency Forest Fire Centre reports five new fires today and 593 active ones. 365 fires are currently designated as out of control, with 63 “being held,” and 165 under control.