Province on to Day 2 of helping Ontario wildfire evacuees

Emergency response crews in the province are preparing for the arrival of more wildfire evacuees from northwestern Ontario after a few more than 300 arrived in Regina on Thursday.

The province’s commissioner of emergency management and fire safety, Duane McKay, said his unit was expecting about 300 more people to arrive Friday, 200 of whom will be housed in Saskatoon.

He said the province has told Ontario that it can take in and house up to 3,000 evacuees, but the final number depends entirely on how many people crews in that province decide to send to Saskatchewan.

So far, most of the evacuees are Ojibwe, McKay said. They’re coming from the Pikangikum First Nation.

Wildfire information on the Province of Ontario’s website shows that Red Fire 39 is the main threat to that community. The website says the fire is about 50,755 hectares in size, or 507.56 square kilometres.

By comparison, New York City is about 783 square kilometres in land covered.

McKay said he and his colleagues were expecting to run into language issues with the arrival of the evacuees, but that hasn’t been a problem so far.

Ontario has sent what he called “cultural officers and language translators” to help people who don’t speak English.

He added that support from Saskatchewan’s Indigenous groups, like the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, has gone beyond expectations.

“The Indigenous issues (we expected) and support is pretty phenomenal — people helping people. And this is why we reached out to FSIN, and all the tribal councils. We’re getting tremendous support,” McKay said.

Evacuees in Regina are staying in private housing at the dorms at the University of Regina, and hotels will be used if necessary, McKay said.

The first group of 200 people going to Saskatoon will be in hotels there, because dorms at the University of Saskatchewan aren’t available, he said.

Evacuees who arrived in Regina on Thursday were grateful for the assistance.

“It’s good to get out of the fire,” one man said. “Travel was hard, especially on the kids.”

— With files from 980 CJME’s Nathan Meyer