MONTREAL: A \u201cserious incident\u201d at a military base in western Canada killed and injured multiple people and sparked a huge blaze on Saturday, the government said.<\/p>\n
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney posted on X that \u201ca serious incident creating a major fire\u201d had occurred at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright military base in western Alberta province.<\/p>\n
There were \u201cboth fatalities and injuries\u201d as a result of the incident, the country\u2019s defense minister, David McGuinty, said at a news conference.<\/p>\n
Neither offered details on number of casualties or the nature of the incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will have more to say in the coming hours and days,\u201d McGuinty added.<\/p>\n
A doctor at a hospital in the city of Edmonton, about 200 kilometers (110 miles) northwest of the base, told public broadcaster CBC that Wainwright\u2019s health-care facilities were \u201ccompletely overwhelmed\u201d by the number of patients requiring care.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is more patients than any of us want to count right now,\u201d Warren Thirsk said. \u201cIt\u2019s a disaster. It\u2019s a one in every 15 to 25-year disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Municipal District of Wainwright posted on social media that the fire had \u201cspread rapidly due to high winds.\u201d<\/p>\n
It said later on Saturday that the blaze was \u201cbeing held at this time,\u201d though firefighting crews would continue to monitor the area.<\/p>\n
Carney said the government was working closely with Alberta officials and local authorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur thoughts are with all the brave women and men affected,\u201d he said on X.<\/p>\n
The fire also disrupted advanced voting ahead of Monday\u2019s referendum on a future poll on whether Alberta wants independence from Canada.<\/p>\n
Alberta\u2019s office responsible for overseeing provincial elections said the advance voting station in Wainwright had closed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL: A \u201cserious incident\u201d at a military base in western Canada killed and injured multiple people and sparked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":937479,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":["post-937478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937478","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=937478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/937479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}