Today, Saturday, the Canadian Army is preparing to evacuate a remote community of 600 people threatened by forest fires that have spread and caused smoke to suffocate a wide area of ​​the United States.
Federal Emergency Minister Eleanor Olszewski said late Friday that the armed forces would use aircraft to evacuate residents of Fort Hope in sparsely populated northwestern Ontario, where some of the most severe fires are burning.
The region has few roads and relies heavily on air travel. Thousands of people have already been evacuated from the affected areas to the southernmost cities in Ontario.
Major wildfires have become a regular annual event in Canada, home to some of the largest forest landscapes in the world. Climate experts say that rising temperatures have dried out wood and increased the risk of fires.
The federal Department of Natural Resources said Saturday that 69 new fires were reported overnight in Canada, bringing the number to 955.
The total area burned so far is about 11,000 square miles (28,500 square kilometers), well below the five-year average. But winds carried the smoke south of the border, prompting authorities to issue air quality advisories and health warnings in parts of the United States.
