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Residents in Lynn Lake have been ordered to evacuate the northern Manitoba community as a fast-moving wildfire threatens the town on Saturday morning.
The mandatory evacuation order is effective immediately, the Town of Lynn Lake said in a social media post Saturday.
As of Friday, an out-of-control wildfire south of the town has quickly grown to 1,600 hectares in size since it was detected on Thursday, according to a provincial fire status report.
Lynn Lake Mayor Brandon Dulewich said the fire was expected to be within 6 km away from Lynn Lake by end-of-day Saturday, reaching town at some point on Sunday.
“We were told there was not enough resources to suppress it adequately before it reaches the community,” he said Saturday afternoon.
The evacuation order came shortly after town officials said in a separate post that crews had to stop aerial suppression efforts because the “fire generated its own storm system, producing lightning and only limited rainfall.”
Extreme fire conditions made it unsafe for ground crews, officials said.
“There is limited crews, limited resources,” Dulewich said. “I fully believed that we would have adequate resources … going into this season, but that is not appearing to be the case.”
Roughly 600 residents living in the town more than 800 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg were forced out of their homes twice last year because of wildfires, first in late May and again in July.
Dulewich has previously said a lack of manpower and firefighting equipment hindered the community’s response, calling on the province to help them stock up on gear like pumps and forestry fire hoses ahead of this year’s wildfire season.
Lynn Lake officials said those who need help evacuating can fly out from from Lynn Lake’s airport. Buses to the airport are available from the town’s office.
An evacuation centre has been set up at the Victoria Inn in Brandon.
Dulewich said the town is working with several agencies to make the evacuation as seamless as possible, but “it’s never an easy process.”
“We honestly thought that there would be more services, more plans in place so that something like this would never happen again,” he said.
“But here we are again, reliving a nightmare that a lot of us have still not fully gotten over.”
The town will shift focus to setting up fire protections around critical infrastructure and ensuring there’s “something to come back to” once residents are out of harm’s way, Dulewich said.
