Canada: Thousands evacuate Manitoba as wildfires rage

CANADA: More than 17,000 people in Canada‘s Manitoba province were being evacuated on Wednesday as wildfires raged.

“The Manitoba government has declared a province-wide state of emergency due to the wildfire situation,” Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew told a news conference.

“This is the largest evacuation Manitoba will have seen in most people’s living memory,” he added.

Military assistance requested

Kinew said he had asked Prime Minister Mark Carney to deploy the military to assist with both the evacuation process and the firefighting efforts to quell the fires.

According to Kinew, military aircraft would be deployed “imminently” to help evacuate residents in endangered remote northern communities.

The evacuations include the town of Flin Flon, where 5,000 people were earlier told to prepare to flee as a blaze bore down on the mining town named after a fictional character in a 1905 paperback novel.