Northwest Territories officials said on Friday evening that more than 19,000 people have fled from Yellowknife due to wildfires and urged those who remain to also leave as soon as possible.
The N.W.T. government on Wednesday ordered Yellowknife’s 20,000 or so residents to leave the capital city — and urged people who couldn’t leave by road to register for flights out of Yellowknife — as a nearby wildfire threatened to reach the city within days.
Yellowknife Mayor Rebecca Alty on Friday evening again urged the roughly five per cent of residents who haven’t left yet to urgently do so.
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Yeah it’s the arse end of the world. It gets quite warm there in the summer though and there are a lot of trees surrounding it so fires aren’t that uncommon. The scale of this one is bad however. My sister’s living there about 15 years and this is her first time being evacuated.
There are no more safe places. Here in Germany, we’re also starting to get major wildfires and we’re completely unprepared. We have a total of zero firefighting planes, mostly using police and military helicopters. Our firefighters are doing training in countries like Greece or Portugal because we have no experience here. And still, most people think it’s just a bad year or bad decade and it will all magically go away very soon.
I wonder why the remaining 5% of residents haven’t evacuated yet. Are they senior citizens that need extra assistance or poor people that can’t afford to go anywhere? Or are they people that think the wildfires aren’t that bad or dislike the big government telling them what to do?
Apparently the government has been quite organised in airlifting folks out but demand was obviously high so the queues were long. They’re not leaving people over money though. My sister lives there and got out by plane about 10 hours ago.
I’d imagine the process is still ongoing though and the support staff on the ground coordinating things will be the last to go.
She didn’t mention anyone deliberately trying to stay behind but I can ask if you’re really curious. She’s currently asleep.
From the article:
“Those who remain are either trying to protect property or are essential workers who have to stay behind.”
