Wildfires scorched more than 38,000 hectares (94,000 acres) of forests in Canada’s Quebec province and firefighters are still trying to douse 13 blazes, officials said Friday.
Fires swept through the Haute-Mauricie, Abitibi-Temiscamingue and Nord-du-Quebec regions of the province over the past few days, blackening the landscape, the Quebec forest fire protection service (SOPFEU) told AFP. More than 300 people from the Obedjiwan native reservation were also evacuated, said SOPFEU spokesman Robert Lemay. On Wednesday, 1,300 were forced to flee the Wemotaci reservation.
Lemay said 940 firefighters, including some from the United States and Manitoba province in Western Canada, had managed to put out most of the 59 fires in the province. But several more days would be needed to douse them all, he said. “The problem has been a very dry spring, with very little rain,” Lemay explained. And there is no precipitation forecast for the region for the coming days. “Most of the fires were sparked by lightning strikes,” he noted.
Montreal, May 29 (AFP)
