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Ottawa has approved military and humanitarian help for wildfire-ravaged Newfoundland, according to the federal emergency management minister.
In a post on X early Thursday morning, Eleanor Olszewski said she had “approved an urgent request for federal assistance from Newfoundland and Labrador due to wildfires.”
The Canadian Forces, the coast guard “and humanitarian partners are mobilizing to support evacuations, firefighting, and the delivery of essential supplies. Help is on the way to Newfoundland,” she said.
The support in the ongoing fight against three raging wildfires is in addition to air support from New Brunswick, which arrived Wednesday.
The three fires that have forced evacuations of hundreds of people and put some communities on alert — the Kingston fire in Conception Bay North, the Holyrood fire and central Newfoundland fire in the Martin Lake area — are still burning out of control, said provincial fire duty officer Jeff Motty.
Motty said the province will spread its aerial resources over the Kingston and Holyrood fires as needed on Thursday, including three water bombers, four helicopters and a bird dog.
“As we see fit between two of those fires, water bombers and helicopters are shared back and forth,” he told CBC Radio’s The St. John’s Morning Show.
He said the Kingston fire is 1,432 hectares, and while in recent days the fire mapping has reported the fire rapidly growing, Motty said that’s because more accurate mapping wasn’t always possible due to smoky conditions.
“Even though it doubled in size — which looks really, really bad — that was not just one day’s run, that was a series of days where we just couldn’t get in there… to map it.”
The Holyrood fire is holding steady at 22 hectares.
“Crews have been very busy out that way on the back of residential areas, making sure that our containment lines are holding next to homes and things of that nature,” Motty said.
In central Newfoundland, Motty said the Martin Lake fire, near the Bay d’Espoir Highway, is 220 hectares as of Wednesday evening. He said it is also still burning out of control.
The province’s fourth water bomber will be flying missions on the fire, he said, along with ground crews and a management team.
Moreover, he said the air tractors sent by New Brunswick arrived on Wednesday and will be working on the fire too.
Meteorologist Allison Sheppard said the forecast for the next few days is “maybe not the greatest for… fire conditions. But there’s no real strong winds so hopefully that works in their favour.”
However, she said don’t expect rain any time soon.
“There really is no significant rain right through the five, seven day extended [forecast],” Sheppard said, adding warm temperatures are expected into next week with no rain to help fight the fires.
Motty said they’ve been facing hot and dry conditions and there is no precipitation in the forecast, which is a problem.
“Right now if I could ask for one thing from Mother Nature, it’d be rain,” he said.
Light winds are better than gusting winds, he said, so that’s in their favour.
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