Northeastern Ontario communities host hundreds of fire evacuees from northwest
More than 1,000 people have been evacuated from Pikangikum, Deer Lake, and Poplar Hill First Nations in northwestern Ontario as raging forest fires in the area are causing air quality to plummet.
Around 500 people have been evacuated to Sudbury and several hundred more to Timmins, Cochrane and Kapuskasing.
The deputy chief of the Timmins Fire Department, Ellard Beaven, said local emergency management teams and Indigenous organizations are working together in this latest evacuation.
"Just to assist any of these evacuees with any healthcare supports, language issues, anything we can do to make their stay a little better," Beaven said.
The province declared a state of emergency in the northeast, as have host communities, in order to access more resources for battling the blaze and keeping evacuees comfortable.
Many of them are children, elderly, or have health conditions and Timmins Mayor George Pirie said the whole province has a responsibility to help in situations like this.
The least his city can do, he said, is make accommodations for the around 150 evacuees now landed and housed at a local hotel.
"(These are) the most vulnerable, the first 150 of the most vulnerable population of smoke and breathing issues," Pirie said.
Keeping them safe includes protecting them against COVID-19, explained Kapuskasing’s Mayor, Dave Plourde.
His community is hosting at least 130 people from the northwest, having set up an evacuation centre with food, medical, mental health, and education services.
Having proper public health protocols in place is also a priority, he said, especially with the province now in Step 3 of its reopening plan.
"We want to make sure that when we send them back home, that they’re not going back worse than when they came," Plourde said. "Certainly we wouldn’t want them to contract COVID-19 while they’re in our community and we’re doing our best to make sure that we have everything in place to make sure that they don’t."
The Porcupine Health Unit’s medical officer of health, Dr. Lianne Catton, said in a news briefing that the health unit will make first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccines available to evacuees who haven’t received one.
"We’ll be working with the evacuation centres in the communities themselves, to ensure that opportunities for vaccine are available," Catton said.
Beaven said usually the city hosts evacuees for two to three weeks, but in this case, it all depends on how long it takes for crews to get the forest fires under control.
With limited rainfall and high temperatures, he said there’s a possibility that the fires will worsen and that more people in the area will need to be evacuated.
"As that changes, we’ll have a better idea of when they’ll be heading back," Beaven said.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Cuban government apologizes to Montreal-area family after delivering wrong body
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
What is changing about Canada's capital gains tax and how does it impact me?
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
'Anything to win': Trudeau says as Poilievre defends meeting protesters
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is accusing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre of welcoming 'the support of conspiracy theorists and extremists,' after the Conservative leader was photographed meeting with protesters, which his office has defended.
Fair in Ontario, flurries in Labrador: Weather systems make for an erratic spring
"It's a bit of a complicated pattern; we've got a lot going on," said Jennifer Smith of the Meteorological Service of Canada in an interview with CTVNews.ca on Wednesday. "[As is] typical with weather, all of these things are related."
Quebec nurse had to clean up after husband's death in Montreal hospital
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
Police tangle with students in Texas and California as wave of campus protest against Gaza war grows
Police tangled with student demonstrators in Texas and California while new encampments sprouted Wednesday at Harvard and other colleges as school leaders sought ways to defuse a growing wave of pro-Palestinian protests.
Bank of Canada officials split on when to start cutting interest rates
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
Northern Ont. lawyer who abandoned clients in child protection cases disbarred
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.
'My stomach dropped': Winnipeg man speaks out after being criminally harassed following single online date
A Winnipeg man said a single date gone wrong led to years of criminal harassment, false arrests, stress and depression.