'What will be left?’ 20,000 flee Canadian city as fire surges

A lot has happened so let's take a look at what you need to know about the wildfire evacuations.

• Evacuations in the northern Canadian city of Yellowknife are continuing and the final commercial flights out of the city to end today

• The fire is 15km (9 miles) north-west of the city, which is home to about 20,000
• Officials fear the fire will reach the outskirts of Yellowknife by the weekend because of strong winds
• Separately, another wildfire burning in British Columbia some 2,000km (1,200 miles) away has forced the city of Kelowna, home to 150,000, to declare a state of emergency and to begin evacuations
• Officials in BC said they believe some structures have burned overnight, but they don't know the extent of the damage yet
• They have warned the situation in Kelowna may worsen
• There are nearly 240 wildfires burning in the Northwest Territories and 378 in British Columbia. A total of 1,050 wildfires are burning across Canada, from Quebec to the Yukon

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Some essential workers have yet to evacuate out of Yellowknife. Among them is Doctor Lori Regenstreif, who is based out of Ontario but has been working in the Northwest Territories for the last week.

She says it has been surreal watching Yellowknife enter this state of emergency, as the city has been a hub for evacuees fleeing other fires elsewhere in the Northwest Territories earlier this week.

“Yellowknife is the go-to,” Regenstreif says of the largest city in the Northwest Territories. “Now Yellowknife is vulnerable.”

“It’s like the mothership has gone down.”

She says the streets are deserted as thousands evacuate out of the city, with restaurants and businesses shuttering doors.

Those who remain are mostly firefighters, police officers, doctors and nurses. One pharmacy in town remains open, Regenstreif says, as its owner refuses to close it.

She has also noticed a handful of others who remain in the city.

“I can’t really speculate on why,” Regenstreif says, adding later that “If my home were up here, I probably wouldn’t want to go either.”

As the weekend nears, Regenstreif says the smoke in the air has cleared up. But there is a sense of unease as the wildfire continues to burn.

“It is a bit nerve-wracking that you know something’s going to come, but you don’t see any of it now.”

With his truck loaded and ready to leave, Todd Ramsay was watching the fires on the other side of the lake from his house in Kelowna, BC.

He says he watched million-dollar houses go up in flames.

“People come down the road near our house to watch the fire, actually sitting there in lawn chairs,” he said.

Worried, Ramsay started to tell them to leave.

That’s when the pines cones and bark started falling from the sky and fire broke out at the back of his house.

Ramsay says he got his two kids, grabbed the dog and the two cats and jumped in his truck.

His family are lucky enough to have a place to go to in the city – his office, but many others are looking for somewhere safe to stay.

“It’s beautiful country here but it’s like California, it gets really dry. When I was a kid it would rain a lot more," he said.

“We worked our entire lives to build this life and our house and the fact that it could be taken away at any second is very sad.”

Emmanuel Kofi YeboahCopyright: Emmanuel Kofi Yeboah

Emmanuel Kofi Yeboah is a resident in Fort Good Hope, an indigenous community about 500 miles from Yellowknife.

Kofi tells me the community has been working together to protect the area and have experienced the fires.

Fort Good Hope is home to less than 600 people, and about 80% are indigenous.

Kofi explained the area is not accessible by road: "You can only get in by plane or boat".

Kofi says the community finds it hard to protect itself because it has little access to outside resources.

"Not even a bigger plane can land here. If this continues there is going to be scarcity of food and patients will need to be transported to the big hospitals in Yellowknife, which means people are really at risk," he says.

"We are hoping and praying for some rain."

Daniel StelpstraCopyright: Daniel Stelpstra

I spoke recently with Juliana Loewen, who is based near Okanagan Lake in the Kelowna area.

She currently has evacuees staying with her.

"It was all very apocalyptic, everyone is packing and throwing things into cars and the roads are just jammed up with people trying to get out," she says.

"We've been having incredible heat and dry conditions along with wind, so it's the perfect condition for fire to spread."

Loewen said people in the area had to jump into the water to try and escape the fires.

"There were lots of boats out with spotlights, looking for people stuck in the lake."

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West Kelowna fire chief Jason Brolund has called last night one of the toughest of his career.

He said "night turned to day" over West Kelowna because of the orange clouds.

Brolund says someone had told him it was like "a hundred years of firefighting all at once in one night".

"I really think it was true... we fought 100 years of fires."

He said they had to rescue people who had not left.

‘We fought hard last night to protect our community."

Brolund also warned the situation "is as significant today as it was last night".

We're now hearing from officials from the Kelowna area in British Columbia.

They warned that Thursday night's dramatic evacuations of residents could be a preview of what’s to come in the days ahead.

Officials say they know structures were lost overnight but do not yet know how many.

There are currently no known deaths from the fires.

Residents were warned that winds will be up today and fire activity will be aggressive.

The airspace around Kelowna International Airport has been closed to everything other than aerial fire-fighters.

A statement on the airport's website says the priority is to give these aerial firefighters the space the need to keep the community safe.

Travellers have been told to check for the latest information from their airline.

The fires around the city of 150,000 people in British Columbia are a serious threat, and authorities have warned the winds in the area are a real concern.

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We've just had a federal update on the wildfires in Canada.

The information covered a lot of issues, so let's take a look at some of the key points that were made.

• Officials do not have an exact number of the evacuated yet
• Half of Canada's Northwest Territories population has been displaced by the wildfires, roughly 22,000 people

• "These fires are very active and very unpredictable," said Harjit Sajjan, Canada's minister of emergency preparedness. The government does not know the full extent of the damage already done, he said
• Climate change is partly to blame for the wildfires, officials said. They announced C$13m over five years to help the territory protect itself from future wildfires
• There will be zero tolerance on price gauging, officials said, amid accusations some airlines had inflated prices for evacuation flights
• There will be enough pilots available to fly the evacuation flights, and the government was going to get permission for extra overtime due to restrictions on flight hours

Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images

Harjit Sajjan, the minister of emergency preparedness, is speaking about the state of the wildfires in Kelowna, British Columbia.

"The winds were very concerning and we didn't know where things are going," he says, adding the government will provide a better update when the situation is clearer.

He also encourages residents to stay tuned to guidance from local authorities to keep themselves safe.

Sajjan says that British Columbia is hit with frequent wildfires, and the government is looking at how the danger can be managed.

A CBC reporter asks if people who bought their flights out of Yellowknife with their own funds will be reimbursed by the government.

Many have had to purchase their own flight, as well as pay for their own gas and other travel supplies during the evacuation.

In response, Bill Blair, Canada's minister of national defence, says the priority right now is to get people out safely.

"No one will be left behind," he says.

Blair adds that any reimbursement would have to be provided by the government of the Northwest Territories, using federal disaster financial assistance funds. He says that information would be shared with evacuees in the coming days.

During the press conference, a reporter asked why a Yellowknife hospital hadn't been evacuated sooner.

The Minister of the National Defence of Canada, Bill Blair, said the logistics of moving people was a careful operation.

He said government officials were working with the right pace to ensure a "very methodical, staged and careful evacuation".

"Officials have been working very carefully to make sure [evacuation] is methodically staged," he said.

Officials in Canada say the current wildfire situation is a consequence of a changing climate.

"We see the impacts of climate change," says Julie Dabrusin, who is the parliamentary secretary to the minister of environment and climate change.

Dabrusin says Canada's government is working on fighting these impacts for now and in the future.

This includes giving the Northwest Territories C$13m over five years to help the territory buy wildland firefighting equipment and train more personnel.

Canada says it has also partnered with the International Association of Firefighters to help train more people.

Canada's minister of emergency preparedness, Harjit Sajjan, has just spoken and says this has been an "incredibly challenging week for Canadians".

He says the wildfire situation in western Canada remains very serious and is escalating rapidly, as seen in the Kelowna area of British Columbia, many of whom were put under evacuation orders yesterday.

"These fires are very active and very unpredictable," he says, adding the government does not know yet the full extent of the damage already done.

"The stress of leaving your home not knowing if it will be there when you return is now a reality faced by thousands," Sajjan says.

We are now receiving an update from federal authorities on the situation in Yellowknife.

Half of Canada's Northwest Territories population has been displaced by the wildfires, officials said, roughly 22,000 people.

Stay with us as we bring you the latest updates.

Flights out of Yellowknife will leave every hour, according to a new update from authorities.

The Northwest Territories government has just released a notification letting residents know they should head to Sir John Franklin High School and prepare for a flight out of the city.

Residents were told to bring snacks and water in anticipation of "extended" wait times.

People are asked to only bring a single carry-on bag with no more than five days' worth of clothing.

Pets will be allowed on flights.

As you can see from the chart below, Canada is experiencing a record year for wildfires.

The comparison goes all the way back to 1983, which had a relatively minuscule amount of fires.

"It is by far the worst forest fire season in our history... it is an incredibly difficult year," says Canada's federal minister for environment and climate change, Steven Guilbeault.

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• 1,050: The number of wildfires spreading across Canada

• 63%: The proportion of population of the Northwest Territories currently under an evacuation order
• 1,100ha: The size of the McDougall Creek wildfire in British Columbia, as estimated on Thurdsay night
• $1,000: How much it cost for a flight out of Yellowknife, social media screenshots yesterday showed. Airlines have since lowered that price to about $272
• 2: The number of years since the town of Lytton was last levelled by fires; now residents have been forced to evacuate again

Evacuees from Yellowknife who managed to get out say they feel a mix of relief, stress and pain after being forced to leave their homes behind.

Beatrice Bernhardt, a woman in her 70s who arrived at the Calgary airport with her husband on Thursday, told The Canadian Press that all she could see over the last few weeks in Yellowknife was smoke.

She said she broke down in tears before boarding her flight.

"It's just a relief to feel safe," she said. "But it's also very painful of what you're leaving behind."

Another Yellowknife resident, Alice Liske, left the city earlier on Tuesday with her six kids to escape the poor air quality from the wildfire smoke.

On her way to her aunt's house in Edmonton, Liske told CTV News that she worried about the possibility of thousands getting out of Yellowknife in just a few days.

"Not only that, but when we go back - what will be there for us?"