‘All I saw was orange’: Ontario requests military aid to fight wildfires

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Joy Fiddler sat outside a hotel smoking a cigarette, as her daughter, Saffron, registered their family of nine with the Canadian Red Cross. Fleeing from an out-of-control wildfire near her Northern Ontario home in Sandy Lake First Nation, she had slept for less than an hour after arriving more than 1,500 kilometres away in Cornwall.

“All I saw was orange,” Ms. Fiddler, 51, said Monday afternoon, recalling her 11-hour wait at the Sandy Lake airport, where military aircraft and helicopters have been landing since Saturday, struggling to airlift nearly 3,000 people amid heavy smoke.

“At times, it would just go black.”

Ms. Fiddler is among at least 159 evacuees who arrived in Cornwall by way of Ottawa, with hundreds of others scattered in different parts of Ontario between Red Lake, Thunder Bay and Mississauga, while many more from Sandy Lake wait to be rescued.

The nearly 160,000-hectare wildfire near Sandy Lake, a remote community just under 600 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay, is one of 26 burning in Ontario.

Across the country, more than 225 large fires are active, at least 100 of which are deemed out of control.

Western Canada has been hardest hit, with both Manitoba and Saskatchewan under states of emergency since late May, and dozens of other fires in Alberta and British Columbia. But this week, the situation in Ontario has significantly worsened.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Monday he had to request help from the Canadian Armed Forces over the weekend.

“I hate bothering our military because they’re busy doing stuff, but we’ve had to call them in to transfer people,” Mr. Ford told The Globe and Mail’s Intersect conference in Toronto.

“You know, we got 200 people on a plane, opposed to our planes [that] hold about nine people,” he said, suggesting the province may look to invest in larger aircraft.

“Every year, we know what’s going to happen, so we need to be prepared.”

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He added that American firefighters are also expected to arrive soon in Ontario.

“I want to give a shout-out to our American friends,” Mr. Ford said. “But we’re getting support from all over the country, and we’re trying to give support, too, be it in Saskatchewan or Manitoba and Alberta.”

Lisa Naylor, Manitoba’s minister in charge of emergency management, said she is monitoring the situation in Ontario, but would not say whether the province has the capacity to receive evacuees from there, which it did earlier this year.

Nearly 21,000 people in Manitoba have been displaced within the past two weeks, as officials contend with 29 wildfires.

“We continue to support our neighbours where and when we are able,” Ms. Naylor wrote in an e-mailed statement to The Globe on Monday.

At a briefing with reporters earlier in the day, she said Manitoba is imploring tourists to reconsider visiting the province, with hotel rooms needed as the wildfire season continues. “For that reason, we are urging Manitobans and Canadians to reconsider non-essential travel and event plans within Manitoba.”

In Saskatchewan, where crews are grappling with 25 wildfires, and around 12,000 people displaced from 33 communities, officials said rain has provided some respite.

The province’s Minister of Public Safety, Tim McLeod, said Monday that some evacuation orders are expected to be lifted in the days ahead.

He said Saskatchewan, which has not required military airlifting, has now requested the armed forces to help with recovery and rebuilding efforts. Two base camps and several tents sheltering up to 200 people will soon be provided by Ottawa, Mr. McLeod said. “Those base camps would be established for working crews, as they go back into the communities.”

Steve Roberts, vice-president of operations for the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, said the province is likely unable to accept evacuees from other jurisdictions.

“There probably isn’t a corner of Saskatchewan that hasn’t been checked for available rooms,” he said, adding at times officials have had to break up families and community groups to provide accommodations.

“We will wait till we have sufficient capacity and reserve in the province before we would offer those supports to our neighbours.”

Alberta and British Columbia, meanwhile, are facing 62 and 80 mostly smaller fires, respectively. But B.C. officials said Monday that the province is calling back a majority of its firefighters who were deployed to other areas, as wildfire activity is expected to increase.

Back in northwestern Ontario, just outside the Sandy Lake band office, recreation director Chris Crow barbecued steaks, chicken, hot dogs and burgers.

At a table set up inside the office, workers and volunteers put sandwiches in plastic bags for the hundreds of evacuees waiting at the airport. The food provided some normalcy amid the uncertainty Monday.

With a report from Andrea Woo in Vancouver