{"id":207993,"date":"2025-10-12T17:48:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T17:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/207993\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T17:48:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T17:48:12","slug":"learning-lessons-from-canadas-wildfire-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/207993\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning lessons from Canada\u2019s wildfire season"},"content":{"rendered":"

WINNIPEG \u2013 Governments and non-profit groups are taking time to review this year\u2019s wildfire season and the unprecedented challenges posed by evacuating tens of thousands of people across wide swaths of the country.<\/p>\n

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The Canadian Red Cross registered 52,000 people across the Prairies, Ontario and Atlantic Canada, making it the agency\u2019s largest domestic operation in recent memory.<\/p>\n

There were several hundred flights to get people out of remote communities, some inaccessible by road.<\/p>\n

Two people died after being trapped by fire near Lac Du Bonnet, Man.<\/p>\n

The length of the wildfire season also stood in sharp contrast to recent years. In parts of the country, a dry spring meant forest floors didn\u2019t \u201cgreen up,\u201d so the ground cover provided fuel for fires to grow and spread quickly.<\/p>\n

In Manitoba, where some 32,000 people fled their homes, fires started earlier in the spring and kept popping up through most of the summer. Snow Lake, a town of 1,000, was evacuated twice.<\/p>\n

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For Flin Flon Mayor George Fontaine, whose community of 5,000 was evacuated for four weeks starting in late May, a key takeaway is that wildfire crews should be prepared to face blazes earlier than normal.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou no longer can just wait for, for example, until the May long weekend to equip (wildfire crews). Nature\u2019s not waiting and we can\u2019t,\u201d Fontaine said in an interview.<\/p>\n

More fires also require more water bombers, Fontaine said. When flames erupted near Flin Flon, in the province\u2019s northwest, water bombers were already tackling fires in Whiteshell Provincial Park in the southeast.<\/p>\n

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Fontaine praised the response from the Manitoba government and neighbouring communities, including Opaskwayak Cree Nation, which accepted busloads of evacuees who couldn\u2019t drive themselves out.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe had to commandeer school buses and find volunteers to drive them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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The buses were able to make the 90-minute trip, drop off people awaiting travel further south, and return to Flin Flon to pick up more.<\/p>\n

Things were more complicated in Pimicikamak Cree Nation, where several thousand people from the community and surrounding area were taken out by plane on 500-kilometre flights south to Winnipeg.<\/p>\n

Heavy smoke closed the local airport, so people were sent 40 kilometres away to Norway House. The trip included a bottleneck at a ferry crossing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took 12 hours to get people through to Norway House,\u201d Pimicikamak Chief David Monias said.<\/p>\n

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Getting everybody out of the area took a week, and the evacuation lasted roughly one month starting in early July.<\/p>\n

Evacuees had to register twice \u2014 once for transportation and once for accommodation, Monias said. Elders and people with health problems faced long waits in hallways, and dealing with the federal and provincial governments, as well as the Red Cross, meant there was duplication, he added.<\/p>\n

In Winnipeg, Brandon and other communities, efforts were made to accommodate the evacuees.<\/p>\n

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There were mass shelters, including those set up at an indoor soccer complex and the main convention centre in Winnipeg.<\/p>\n

Officials tried to find hotel rooms for as many evacuees as possible.<\/p>\n

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But with up to 21,000 out of their homes at any one time and about 15,000 hotel rooms across the province \u2014 many of them occupied during the summer tourist season \u2014 it was an uphill battle. Some people were sent to Niagara Falls, Ont.<\/p>\n

Monias said large open areas with cots aren\u2019t good for families, the elderly or people with health issues. He\u2019d like governments to use their authority to cancel major events and free up hotel rooms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere needs to be some kind of understanding with some of the cities that we\u2019re sending our people into to make sure that if there\u2019s events that are occurring \u2026 to prioritize evacuees to stay there,\u201d Monias said.<\/p>\n

Premier Wab Kinew expressed frustration at one point in the summer about a small number of hotel owners who he said were not offering up their rooms.<\/p>\n

He said he\u2019s considering using the Manitoba Developmental Centre in Portage la Prairie \u2014 a former institution for people with intellectual disabilities that closed last year \u2014 as an at-the-ready housing option for evacuees.<\/p>\n

Professor Shirley Thompson, with the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Manitoba, said with the frequency of wildfires increasing, having a dedicated facility for evacuees could mean better cultural supports and other services.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot everyone speaks English \u2026 but also just for the fact they are so far away from home, to have someone that sees their perspective is very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Thompson also said northern First Nations lack extensive air quality monitoring to keep an eye on the effects of wildfires, as well as public facilities with filtered air, such as libraries.<\/p>\n

The Manitoba government and the Canadian Red Cross both said they will undertake thorough reviews of their operations during the wildfire season.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis takes time,\u201d the Red Cross said in a prepared statement.<\/p>\n

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 12, 2025.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 The Canadian Press\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WINNIPEG \u2013 Governments and non-profit groups are taking time to review this year\u2019s wildfire season and the unprecedented…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,83,295,714,66,715,1133,6090],"class_list":{"0":"post-207993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-disaster","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-social","15":"tag-weather","16":"tag-wildfires"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}