Over the past couple of weeks, Ollie Williams has been periodically checking the camera of his doorbell on his mobile to determine whether his home is there. Sometimes, he’s checked the camera normally used to keep an eye on the dog when his companion aren’t there.
“It’s quite traumatic to return,” he admits. “I was looking at the camera in our lovely living room and I was like there’s the TV, the sofa and the dog’s bed. I was crying for around 5 minutes.”
Williams isn’t certain if he’ll ever meet it ever again.
He’s just 400 miles of his residence in Yellowknife which is the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories in Canada. He escaped along with nearly all the city’s 20,000 residents following an evacuation order was issued because wildfires are burning dangerously close by.
There are over 200 fires burning across the Northwest Territories. More than 400 of them are in neighboring Province that is British Columbia. Canada is facing the most destructive fire season ever that has left many thousands affected and blanketing areas of the country and those in the U.S. with thick, smoking smoke. In all there were more than 5,790 fires across Canada this year as per the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.
In Yellowknife the city of Yellowknife, a mandatory evacuation order took effect across the entire city on Wednesday leading to a tense scene with long lines of cars lined up for miles to get out to the main route that leads out of town.
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“It’s one lanes in every direction for 600 miles. It’s essentially an unpaved road in some areas,” Williams says.
Williams edits Cabin Radio Cabin Radio, a non-profit internet radio station and newsroom online located in Yellowknife. The small team of Williams are tirelessly sending out messages to the residents during the evacuation, even during their own evacuation in an effort to provide information to those living who live in areas in which cell phone service and resources are scarce. He evacuated using his Starlink satellite dish installed at the rear of his truck, placed within a bag of pet food. He utilized the signal to update the local community as his companion drove.
“Personally I’m completely ruined at this moment. I’ve been spending the majority of the week providing what can be described as”survival updates” to 20,000 of my friends. I’m mostly focusing on my work as it frees me from thinking about any other thing,” Williams says.
It’s not just humans that are being forced to leave by the fires- wildlife too is being forced to move. This past Friday Yellowknife, the capital city Yellowknife posted on Twitter it was the site of a bear that had been seen in the streets.
Yellowknife is one of eight communities in the Northwestern Territories evacuated in the past week, mayor Rebecca Alty told NPR’s All Things Considered, calling it “unprecedented.” She said that this was Yellowknife’s first evacuation.
“The two most recent fires that were a bit massive in our region were in 1998 and 2014, but neither of them which would have threatened Yellowknife enough that we had to consider an evacuation or even declare an evacuation order,” she explained. “It’s been a hard two days, and, I’d guess, an extremely difficult month. The fire was first began.”
South of Yellowknife close to that border to the United States, a surreal wall of flames surrounds the beautiful Okanagan Lake in West Kelowna, British Columbia. In the evening, the hillsides are lit by the flames, providing a stark background to the city of over 30,000 firefighters from across the province fight to keep the fire in check.
“It’s difficult to describe. It’s the sound of a raging river. It’s a night-time sound,” West Kelowna Fire Chief Jason Brolund spoke to the CBC following an extremely long night of fighting the fire. “The most funny thing is that the night before — and I’m saying humorous with the highest respect — but the funniest aspect was that night turned to day and the bright orange glowing light was unlike anything I’ve seen before.”
At the press conference on early on Friday early in the morning Brolund appeared exhausted, declaring that several structures were lost.
“We knew that it would be a disaster. But it was far more severe than we expected,” he said. “Somebody told me at the end of the night in the heat of the battle saying that it was like a hundred years worth of fire fighting within a single night. I truly believe that it was the truth. We fought a century of destruction.”
A possible new normal
It’s part of the natural cycle that allows the boreal forests of Canada to ignite and, at a certain point, it’s beneficial to the ecosystem.
“Some people think”Well this is a result of climate change. This is a disaster. We’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s not true. We’ve seen this many times. However, it’s also the result of climate change, and it’s more serious than anything we’ve seen before.” Daniel Perrakis, a scientist studying fires at the Canadian Forest Service in British Columbia, told NPR.
Climate change makes large, destructive wildfires more most likely as a result of warmer temperatures and less dry vegetation. Temperatures that are higher than average have been increasing the duration of fire seasons and the quantity of the land that is which is being burned and the amount of locations where fires may be observed. In recent times, there has been an increase in fires across the Arctic and even in certain forests.
To Ollie Williams, who’s waiting to see if the house — and the community in Yellowknife is safe Ollie Williams is worried that this kind of fire season could be the norm “I think the most terrifying part is this is an anomaly, however it could not be a rare event in the future years. It could just be a normal summer. Then what should us do?”
He also states that it’s difficult to think about the future when there’s too much to worry about day-to-day.
Then he receives an email from a person fighting fires in Yellowknife and is able to call back to inform the community. who are now scattered and eager to return to home.
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