Canada readies Ontario evacuation as wildfire smoke spreads into US

OTTAWA: Canada was preparing to airlift residents out of a remote northwestern Ontario community threatened by wildfires, as smoke from blazes continued to drift into large parts of the United States.

Federal Emergencies Minister Eleanor Olszewski said late Friday that the Canadian military would use aircraft to evacuate the roughly 600 people living in Fort Hope. The community is in a sparsely populated part of Ontario where some of the most severe fires are burning. The area has limited road access and depends heavily on air travel.

Thousands of people from other affected locations have already been moved to cities farther south in Ontario. Canada’s natural resources ministry said on Saturday that 69 new fires had been recorded overnight, taking the total number of active fires nationwide to 955.

The ministry said the area burned so far was nearly 28,500 square kilometres, which remained below the five-year average. Major wildfires have become a recurring yearly event in Canada, which contains some of the world’s largest forested areas. Climate experts have said higher temperatures have dried out timber and raised the risk of fire.

Smoke triggers US air quality alerts

Smoke from the Canadian fires moved south across the border, leading authorities in parts of the United States to issue air quality alerts and health advisories. At 8am ET, the US Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow website listed air quality as unhealthy across an area covering southern Ontario, eastern parts of Ohio and West Virginia, most of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, much of Virginia, and all of Maryland, Delaware and Washington, DC.

Some sections of western Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh, were rated very unhealthy. AirNow forecast that conditions in those areas would improve during the day.

AccuWeather said on Friday that smoke from the Canadian wildfires was expected to have only a minimal effect on Sunday’s soccer World Cup final at New York New Jersey Stadium.

Trump comments and Canada response

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that what he described as incompetent forest management in Canada was responsible for the smoke and added that he would include the

incalculable cost

of dealing with the pollution in existing tariffs on Canadian goods.

Following those remarks, Olszewski said Canada had invested C$12 billion ($8.56 billion) in forest sustainability and fire prevention since 2020 as the country deals with increasingly dry and warm weather conditions.