Sask. NDP wants province to call for more help as feds warn extreme fire season will continue
Tim Hodgson, the federal minister of natural resources, said in a national wildfire update Friday the conditions that have driven one of the worst wildfire seasons on record for Canada will persist until the end of the summer.
"Forecasts point to above-average temperatures across much of Canada through the end of August, with dry conditions expected to intensify in the coming weeks, particularly in the West and the North," he said.
As of Saturday, there were 51 active wildfires in the province, according to the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency. Of those, 12 are considered not contained.
There have been 379 fires in the province to date, well above the five-year average of 298 for this date.
Saskatchewan NDP MLA Leroy Laliberte, who represents the Athabasca riding in northwestern Saskatchewan, said Friday the provincial government's response to the fires has been inadequate.
His constituency includes the northern village of Beauval, which is under a full evacuation order.
"The people I've been talking to for a week now aren't getting the resources and relief firefighters they need. They're working around the clock, they're exhausted and, frankly, they believe the provincial government has abandoned them," said Laliberte.
He said the Saskatchewan Party government should seek federal assistance, maintaining the federal government has to "wait for a call from the province."
Steve Roberts, the vice-president of operations for the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, disputed that characterization, saying the provincial government has been in constant contact with federal officials.
Public Safety Minister Tim McLeod "has sent a letter to his corresponding [federal] minister requesting some resources," Roberts said Friday.
Specifically, those requests have been for "values protection resources from across the country to augment what we already have, [and] a general increase if there's available helicopters that could be deployed and added to move crews around to do some work," he said.
Roberts also said the province has received permission to use a fire camp from the Department of National Defence, but has not yet needed to use it.
'Monster of a fire' flares up: Beauval mayor
The public safety agency said Friday that eight communities are currently under full or partial evacuation orders, affecting about 1,700 people.
Rick Laliberte, Beauval's mayor, said that on Thursday, the Muskeg fire near his community flared up due to strong winds, moving dangerously close to the local airport and industrial area.
It's now effectively surrounding the village, which is about 350 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon, and has periodically cut off Highway 918, the town's only northward access point, he said.
"Rain is the only thing that will stop this fire," he said on Friday afternoon. "It's a monster of a fire. It goes from Dore Lake all the way to Île-à-la-Crosse. It's a huge fire."
Earlier this week, 40 firefighters from Australia arrived in Beauval to assist the local and provincial crews. On Saturday, another 40 crew members from Mexico will be deployed on the fire line there, the public safety agency said. The two groups will join fire crews already flown in from Quebec.
The agency's Roberts said crews are facing "stressful, long hours, harsh conditions in many cases, sometimes [working] around the clock."
"To be honest, we need more boots on the ground," he said. "Our crews have been working for over six weeks now almost non-stop. So the more resources we can put to bear on these fires, the better control we will have of them."
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