Thousands of people had to be evacuated from their homes in northern and western Canada, where firefighters continued today to extinguish the rare wildfires.

“At least 19,000 people have been evacuated from Yellowknife in the last 48 hours,” almost the entire town, Shane Thompson, environment minister for the Northwest Territories, whose capital is Yellowknife, said last night (Friday).

15,000 people were evacuated by road, 3,800 were evacuated by air, while at least 300 firefighters were called in to battle the flames, he added, in one of the largest mobilizations in this very isolated region of Canada’s north.

Some of the evacuated residents arrived Friday night at Calgary airport in Alberta, about 1,750 km south of Yellowknife, with small luggage, some with their pets, an AFP reporter on the ground noted.

Displaced persons from the Canadian North gathered in a small area to be registered and taken to hotels. Fruit, cookies and water were made available to them.

At least 40 flights carrying about 3,500 passengers from Yellowknife have landed in Calgary and the city has set aside 495 hotel rooms for evacuees, authorities said.

Campus evacuated

British Columbia, about 600 kilometers west of Calgary, is also facing the flames and had to declare a state of emergency yesterday.

The fires are particularly affecting West Kelowna (more than 30,000 residents), where a “significant number” of homes were burned, according to authorities.

The luxury Lake Okanagan Resort hotel, which has previously hosted senior politicians such as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is among the buildings destroyed by the flames, according to images circulating in the local press.

The situation is also critical on the other side of Okanagan Lake, in Kelowna (population about 150,000), where the local University of British Columbia campus, home to more than 11,000 students, has been placed under evacuation orders Friday night.

Airspace in the area has also been closed to aid the efforts of firefighting aircraft.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled Friday night to Edmonton, about 1,000 km from Yellowknife, where he met with evacuees from the north at a reception centre.

Trudeau spoke of “uncertain and scary times” as more than a thousand wildfires ravage the country from east to west, including more than 230 in the Northwest Territories and at least 370 in British Columbia.

Canada has faced extreme weather events in recent years that are increasing in intensity and frequency due to global warming.

The country is experiencing a record fire season this year: 168,000 Canadians have been evacuated across the country and 14 million hectares – roughly the size of Greece – have burned, twice as much as the last record set in 1989.