Dozens of wildfires devastating large swaths of Ontario continued to burn through Friday morning, releasing smoke and particles into the air and affecting major cities including Toronto, New York and Detroit.
Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources reported a total of more than 180 active fires across the province on Friday morning through its interactive forest fire map, which showed more than 20 new blazes.
The fires in Ontario have been concentrated around Thunder Bay, a city on Lake Superior about an hour’s drive from Minnesota. They have caused dramatic evacuations in at least 15 communities, which are home to more than 1,500 people.
Wildfires tend to gravely affect Indigenous communities living in remote, rural areas in Canada. Several of those evacuated this week were First Nations reserves, including Cat Lake, Eabametoong and McDowell Lake, fly-in communities that needed to be evacuated by air.
More than 850 fires remained active across Canada, with 113 categorized as out of control, according to the government.
Firefighting is the remit of regional governments in Canada, in this case the province of Ontario, rather than the federal government. But on Thursday, the province said it needed federal help to cope with the spreading wildfires, including from the army.
“In response to the significant threat of wildland fire activity in northern Ontario, the province has issued a formal request for assistance to the government of Canada to be prepared to expedite the deployment of federal resources to support evacuations,” Jill Dunlop, the Ontario minister for emergency preparedness, said on social media on Thursday.
The post Ontario Wildfires Burn On, Releasing More Smoke appeared first on New York Times.
