'Most of the city is evacuating': Gridlock on Alberta highway after evacuation order in Fort McMurray
Four Fort McMurray neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday as a wildfire gets closer to the city.
The governors of California and Nevada called for more federal firefighting assistance Wednesday as they toured a region blackened by one of several massive wildfires that have destroyed dozens of homes in the West.
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak and California Gov. Gavin Newsom stood on ashen ground as they surveyed burned homes and a mountain range of pine trees charred by the Tamarack Fire south of Gardnerville, Nevada, near Topaz Lake.
The Democrats called on the federal government to provide more firefighting resources and stressed that climate change could make wildfires even more intense and destructive.
Battling large-scale fires with limited resources, the U.S. Forest Service decided in early July to let dozens of lightning fires burn, including the Tamarack Fire.
Sisolak said more support and firefighters would have prevented the U.S. Forest Service from having to make difficult decisions about where to direct its resources.
“We need help on the federal side. We need more people coming in. We need more resources. We need more air support. We need more boots on the ground,” Sisolak said.
Nevada firefighters with the East Fork Fire Protection District told Newsom that each year fires are spreading earlier in the season due to hotter, drier weather.
The U.S. Forest Service manages the majority of wildfire-prone land in California. Newsom said the agency is understaffed, underfunded and needs major changes.
“We have a historic framework that has to be thrown out. You can't look back a decade or two. The world is radically changing as the climate changes. You may not believe in science, you got it with your own damn eyes,” Newsom said, gesturing toward the blackened landscape.
A historic drought and recent heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West. Scientists say climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
Cooler weather and even rain helped the fight against some of the largest blazes this week but fire officials warned that hotter, drier weather was returning.
The 106-square-mile (275-square-kilometer) Tamarack blaze was more than halfway surrounded by containment lines. At least 23 buildings have burned since lightning sparked the fire on July 4.
Evacuation orders for about 2,000 residents on both sides of the state line were lifted early in the week.
Ed and Sonya Amaral returned to their Gardnerville home on Wednesday after being evacuated two weeks ago to find their trees blackened and brittle. The embers scorched nearby homes and an art studio, but spared the Amarals.
The couple believes their home still stands partially due to brush they cleared for a defensible perimeter. When they moved there in October, neighbors told them some of the trees hadn't burned in two centuries.
“I just told them, `Never say never,”' Sonya Amaral said.
They told the governors that they hoped the fires served as a lesson about the importance of fire prevention in forests and neighborhoods.
Tuesday thunderstorms brought rain and cooler, more humid weather that made grass and brush less prone to burning, fire officials said. The chance of thunderstorms with rain, possibly heavy at times, was expected through Friday.
“We're not doing hand-to-hand combat” on the blaze, Dan Dallas, an incident commander for the fire, said Tuesday evening.
It was a relief from fiercely dry heat that scorched much of the West only a week or two earlier, when flames feeding on bone-dry fuel raged through a dozen states.
California's largest blaze, the Dixie Fire, was 23% contained but threatening more than 10,000 homes in the region about 175 miles (282 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco.
The fire had scorched nearly 340 square miles (880 square kilometers), an area bigger than New York City. Weather conditions trapped smoke over the blaze and the shade helped lower temperatures and keep humidity up but authorities said temperatures could warm to well above normal in the second half of the week.
Wednesday's report on property losses showed 35 structures and 19 minor structures destroyed, and seven other structures damaged.
In neighboring Oregon, the 3-week-old Bootleg Fire has destroyed 161 homes, 247 outbuildings and 342 vehicles in Klamath and Lake counties. It was more than halfway contained after scorching nearly 646 square miles (1,673 square kilometers) of remote land.
Crews hoped to get a break from cooler temperatures through Wednesday before hotter, drier weather returned.
Record-breaking heat also has hammered the northern Rockies this week, as smoke from dozens of large wildfires as far away as California drove pollution to unhealthy levels.
Unhealthy air was recorded around most of Montana's larger cities - Billings, Butte, Bozeman and Missoula - and in portions of northern Wyoming and eastern Idaho, according data from U.S. government air monitoring stations.
------
Metz is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
------
AP writer John Antczak contributed to this report from Los Angeles.
Four Fort McMurray neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday as a wildfire gets closer to the city.
Saskatchewan RCMP have revealed that a historic sexual assault investigation has led to the discovery of alleged crimes against children dating back to 2005.
Less than a week after two public sculptures featuring a livestream between Dublin, Ireland, and New York City debuted, 'inappropriate behaviour' in real-time interactions between people in the two cities has prompted a temporary shutdown.
After a final frame that saw the visiting Vancouver Canucks claw their way back and tie the game late, a point shot by Oilers defenceman Evan Bouchard with 38 seconds left (until what seemed like certain overtime) iced the 3-2 victory for Edmonton to knot the series.
Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker railed against Pride month, working women, President Biden's leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and abortion during a commencement address at Benedictine College last weekend.
King Charles III has unveiled the first portrait of the monarch completed since he assumed the throne, a vivid image that depicts him in the bright red uniform of the Welsh Guards against a background of similar hues.
The annual list of Canada's top restaurants in the country was just released and here are the places that made the 2024 cut.
The province has released more information on its plan to break up Alberta Health Services and replace it with four sector-based health agencies.
The Biden administration has told key lawmakers it is sending a new package of more than US$1 billion in arms and ammunition to Israel, two congressional aides said Tuesday.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.