A large billow of smoke from a wildfire near the Susies Lake Area of Halifax on Tuesday.Kelly Clark/The Canadian Press
When he received an evacuation order on Thursday, Mike Pasztor of Annapolis County, N.S., grabbed what he could: a photo of his wife’s daughter who had passed away, some bottles of water and some of his documents.
While his wife left toward Bridgetown, he stuck around to douse his house and the surrounding area with water.
“It’s all we have, is our home, right?” said Mr. Pasztor. “And my little and my shop and and everything I’ve collected over the course of 40 years.”
More than 50 households in Annapolis County are some of the most recent residents displaced by wildfire in a summer that, for some provinces, has been the worst in decades.
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On Thursday, an evacuation order was issued for parts of Annapolis County as the biggest of the nearby wildfires on the province’s mainland grew to 406 hectares.
The order comes as blazes creep into parts of Canada that have rarely had a fire season, creating a smoky and perilous summer for many people across the country.
While lower temperatures and increased relative humidity have helped fire suppression efforts on mainland Nova Scotia, lightning and dry conditions continue to pose a risk, said Dave Steeves, a public information officer for the province’s Department of Natural Resources.
“The conditions down here today are a bit more favourable than they have been in the days previous, but we’re still dealing with a relatively explosive situation regarding the amount of moisture that’s left in the fuels around,” Mr. Steeves told reporters on Friday.
He said that in the past day and a half, he had seen “some relatively extreme fire behaviour.”
“Our flame lengths were quite high, which is an indicator to basically how dangerous the situation is,” Mr. Steeves said.
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In nearby Bridgetown, Lory James, owner of the Bridgetown Motor Inn, said her hotel is nearly at capacity with evacuees and staff of Nova Scotia’s Department of Natural Resources.
“The community has really rallied,” said Ms. James. “They’ve set up a muster point basically for all the evacuees at the fire station. And people are bringing food over for everybody.”
At Bridgetown’s Junction Sixteen on Thursday evening, restaurant supervisor Perry Ross said he could sense tension in the air as people from town became increasingly concerned about the possibility of having to evacuate themselves.
The fire is about 10 kilometres away from Bridgetown, Mr. Ross estimated.
He owns a small hobby farm with about 45 goats, chickens and dogs.
“To get all the animals kind of wrangled up would be quite the Noah’s Ark,” said Mr. Ross, who said a friend had offered to lend a livestock trailer should the evacuation order grow to include Bridgetown.
Elsewhere on Friday, progress had been made battling fires in Ontario’s Kawartha Lakes region. The Burnt River area fire, known by officials as HAL019, moved from being classified as “being held” to “under control,” meaning the blaze has been suppressed enough to limit spread of the fire.
In the same region, the Kirkfield area fire moved from being classified as “out of control” on Thursday to “being held” on Friday, meaning that under forecasted weather conditions, the fire suppression efforts and current committed resources mean that the fire is unlikely to spread beyond predetermined boundaries.
Mount Underwood wildfire, southwest of Port Alberni, B.C., on Tuesday.HO/The Canadian Press
In British Columbia, rain that fell recently has helped improve conditions around the Mount Underwood wildfire near Port Alberni and in the Wesley Ridge fire near Cameron Lake, said fire information officer Karley Desrosiers on Friday.
Manitoba has been under a provincewide state of emergency for more than a month over widespread and severe wildfires. The province said this year’s wildfire season has been the worst in the past 30 years, having burned more than 1.75 million hectares so far.
The province said that as of Wednesday, the wildfire service was responding to 161 active blazes.
A state of emergency is in place until Aug. 22.
Improved weather allowed for Saskatchewan to lift a provincewide fire ban on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Steve Roberts of the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency said that all areas of the province’s northern forest had received between five and 20 millimetres of rain recent days.
“That has increased our ability to contain these fires and accomplish more,” said Mr. Roberts.
On Friday, there were 79 active wildfires still burning across Saskatchewan and eight active evacuations, according to the province.
In Alberta, 39 of 51 active wildfires have been classified as “under control,” according to the province’s interactive map.
The Northwest Territories currently has 113 active wildfires, with 95 classified as “out of control,” according to the territory.
Yukon had 88 active wildfires burning as of Friday, with 161,971 total hectares burned so far this year.
With a report from the Canadian Press
Planes and helicopters were deployed near Halifax on Aug. 12 as firefighters battled a wildfire.
Reuters