Wildfire triggers race to evacuate entire Canadian city of Yellowknife

 

Officials in Canada urged some 20,000 residents to evacuate as a wildfire poses a “real threat to the city.”

With the blaze threatening to reach the city in the coming days, firefighters have battled to ward off flames that have advanced to nearly 10 miles of Yellowknife, officials said.

“I want to be clear that the city is not in immediate danger, and there’s a safe window for residents to leave the city by road and by air,” he told a news conference Wednesday evening. But he urged residents to leave by noon local time on Friday in a phased evacuation.

...Sitting on the north side of the expansive Great Slave Lake, Yellowknife is about 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle and 600 miles north of Edmonton, or 900 miles north of the international border with the United States.

...Photos showed a long line of cars heading southward along the only main highway out of Yellowknife, where the approaching flames risk cutting off access to nearby communities as soon as Friday. Authorities have told residents to head toward Alberta...more