Halifax residents board buses to view homes destroyed by wildfires

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (AP) — Residents from Canada's Atlantic Coast city of Halifax whose homes have been destroyed by wildfires boarded buses Friday to get a look at what little remains of where they used to live.

Bill Moore, the region’s executive director of community safety, told a news conference that about 200 people would be part of the grim tour through subdivisions northwest of the downtown, which fire officials said would be safe to enter for a short time.

About 200 structures, including 151 homes, have been destroyed in the Halifax area, though those numbers could change. In all, more than 16,000 people were evacuated from homes and businesses there.

“We’re very sensitive to the trauma this may cause people,” Moore said, adding that the first people admitted back into the evacuation zone around Upper Tantallon and Hammonds Plains would be those whose homes were gutted by the flames. Next, residents whose properties suffered less damage will be invited into the area to see their residences.

Moore said he spent Thursday meeting with affected residents and showing them photographs of the damaged area.

The wildfire that started Sunday in Upper Tantallon, Nova Scotia, was still considered out of control Friday, but 50% of it was contained by firefighters as of Thursday.

The Halifax fire department's Deputy Chief Roy Howlett said some of the damaged and destroyed homes were still burning, and he stressed that the neighborhoods within the evacuation zone are still part of an active fire scene.

“I was out there last night,” he said. “The smoke was very thick, you could taste it .... We’ve had many flare-ups.”

As scattered showers moved across parts of the province early Friday, fire officials warned that it wouldn’t do much to slow down the four fires burning out of control in the province.

“While it was welcome, it will hold us for only a number of hours,” Dave Steeves, a forest technician with the Department of Natural Resources, told a briefing at a command post in Upper Tantallon.

Still, the forecast was calling for steady rain tonight and into Saturday.

Halifax Mayor Mike Savage said more rain is what he has been praying for. “If you happen to know the Almighty, talk to her,” Savage told a later briefing. “Put in a good word for us.”

In the southwestern corner of the province, a much larger wildfire continued to burn out of control in Shelburne County, where 6,700 people have been evacuated from their homes — about half of the municipality’s population.

The Barrington Lake wildfire, which started Saturday, continued to grow on Thursday, reaching 200 square kilometers (more than 75 square miles) — the largest recorded wildfire in the province’s history. It has consumed 50 homes and cottages.

No rain was reported Friday morning in Shelburne County, where there was concern about thunderstorms producing lightning strikes in the afternoon. Steeves said lightning would ground all aircraft and make it unsafe for crews on the ground.

Meanwhile, the provincial government said six more aircraft would be flying in from the United States on Friday and over the weekend. As well, an unspecified number of firefighters from the U.S. and Costa Rica are on their way.

A city on Quebec’s north shore also declared a state of emergency on Friday as forest fires raged in different parts of that province. Sept-Îles Mayor Steeve Beaupré said certain sectors of his city about 890 kilometers (590 miles) northeast of Montreal were ordered to evacuate by 4 p.m. Friday as a preventative measure. The Uashat Mak Mani-utenam First Nation said the roughly 1,500 residents of the Innu community of Mani-Utenam outside Sept-Îles have also been told to leave their homes.

Public Security Minister François Bonnardel said about 10,000 people are affected by the evacuation order on Quebec’s north shore and 1,000 in the municipality of Chapais.

U.S. officials as far south as Maryland, Baltimore, Virginia and Pennsylvania reported being impacted by the Canadian wildfires.

The National Weather Service in Wakefield, Virginia, issued an air quality alert for Friday for the Richmond, Virginia area due to smoke from wildfires across the northeast and Atlantic Canada.

St. Mary’s County Department of Emergency Services, located about 80 miles (about 130 kilometers) south of Washington D.C., warned residents in a tweet on Thursday that air quality might be impacted by the fires in southeastern Canada.

Similar warnings were issued by the National Weather Service in Baltimore-Washington and the Philadelphia area, including parts of New Jersey, where officials warned sensitive groups to take precautions when going outside. A thick smoke plume was reported over Cape Cod, Massachusetts.