About four millimeters of rain and a temperature that has dropped to 17ºC – common in August in the Great Canadian North – have timidly alleviated the situation in Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, whose 20,000 inhabitants were evacuated last week. The uncontrolled fire is still active 15 kilometers from what is also known as the diamond capital of Canada, which is now more than ever a ghost town, with the presence of just numerous fire departments and the reinforcement of 400 members of the army . Through the streets, not a soul but some grizzly bear prowling, as several television cameras have captured.
No one remembers such an extreme year and there are no records as catastrophic as the current one in Canada, in which more than 5,700 fires have already been recorded. The authorities still do not know if they will be able to prevent the flames from reaching Yellowknife, on the shores of the Great Slave Lake, which occupies an area slightly smaller than that of Catalonia, or if the houses in this enclave of barely a century of history that has lived through the fevers oil, gas and now diamonds (three mines near the city are operational) will end up reduced to ashes, like the nearby Enterprise (in the photo that accompanies this text).
Tungsten, Uraniuym City, Port Radium… The settlements and history of the Canadian Northwest Territories are closely linked to the exploitation of mineral and energy resources. It is the same case of Yellowknife, which instead owes its name to a native tribe, the Dene, who used a type of ocher knives. With no promise of lucrative jobs, there is little reason for Canadians from the seven southern provinces to settle in places with temperatures that can drop to -40C in winter.
Getting to Yellownife by plane takes two and a half hours from Vancouver, the big city on the west coast in British Columbia, another province beset by fires this hot summer that is causing huge fires in the hundreds and hundreds of kilometers of forests of conifers. By car, it is about 1,500 kilometers from Edmonton, the great oil capital of the country, or about 19 hours of driving with the incentive of seeing herds of mountain bison.
Canada is home to 9% of the planet’s forests and has always had a realistic and particular policy for fighting forest fires. To begin with, each province or territory has its own powers in this area. But none was prepared for this summer, where budget cuts have left dwindling resources to deal with climate change that is wreaking unsuspected havoc. The summer has had episodes of unusual heat and the forests are dry, despite being in one of the largest lake areas in the world.
The distances in Canada’s Great North are so vast and the roads so few that the fires simply cannot be fought. It is the territory of free fires, where nature decides your luck. Normally the forest burns due to the action of lightning –although there are also arson fires– and it is extinguished when the rains, rivers and lakes form impassable barriers. The firefighters, yes, try to control those closest to urban centers, such as Yellowknife, where large defenses have been created, basically felling trees to draw a perimeter of gigantic firebreaks.
Highway 3, which ends at Yellowknife, is one of two that allow driving from the US border into the Great North. The other is the one that winds through the Yukon Territory called the Dempster Highway. The Dempster Highway is the only highway that leads to the Canadian Arctic. And it includes a section of 750 kilometers of gravel. It is so difficult that the few tourists who complete it are awarded a diploma certifying that they have reached the Mackenzie delta.
The Mackenzie River rises in the waters of the Great Slave Lake, where Yellownife sits, and its wide navigable channel travels almost 2,000 kilometers before flowing into the Arctic. It is a paradise for fishing, one of the great attractions that attracts tourists to the Canadian Great North each year. The others are adventures like walking through wild nature, visiting abandoned whaling stations like on Herschel Island, animal watching and contact with Eskimo culture in cities like Inuvik, where the Dempster Highway ends.
