The mayor of Flin Flon says the evacuation of his community feels like a family being ripped apart, but he hopes everyone will be back together again once the threat of wildfires is safely past.
George Fontaine told 680 CJOB’s Connecting Winnipeg that the situation facing the northern Manitoba city remains volatile but said, to his knowledge, no structures in Flin Flon have been destroyed by the blaze.
Fontaine said he feels for the 5,000 residents who have been evacuated, as well as those in the surrounding communities, including Cranberry Portage, Man., and Creighton, Sask.
“They’re not necessarily residents of Flin Flon, but they are Flin Flon society members. We all live together, we belong to the same organizations, the same churches, the same sports clubs, the arts communities,” he said.
“All those things are intermingled — they’re all one group of people, and right now they’re in turmoil.”
Fontaine learned Monday that a handful of officials will be allowed back into the city to support firefighters and get on-the-ground information about the ongoing crisis. While it’s been difficult to get much in the way of updates so far, he said he understands that people on the front lines of the wildfire fight have a lot on their hands right now.
“People are trying, I’m sure, on their end … I’m not getting reports because they’re too darn busy doing what they need to do to talk to me,” he said.
“What we’re looking at right now is a situation where we just keep hoping.”
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Fontaine said he’s thankful to the City of Winnipeg, more than 750 kilometres away, as well as other Manitoba communities, for opening spaces to support Flin Flon’s evacuees.
While Flin Flon, so far, hasn’t seen any damage to buildings within city limits, the town of Lynn Lake hasn’t been quite so lucky.
Lynn Lake Mayor Brandon Dulewich told Global Winnipeg that a nearby wildfire did enter the town, although the vast majority of its 600 residents — aside from a few town officials and fire crews — had already been evacuated.
“Right in town we’ve lost four buildings. Two fairly large apartment complexes and two residential homes. There’s some minor injuries of the firefighters,” he said.
Dulewich said at one point Lynn Lake’s hospital was threatened, but fire crews were able to hold back the flames.
Fire departments from Morris and Brandon are on the ground to help combat the blaze, a situation the mayor described as touch and go.
“It’s tough. The winds we’ve been seeing are unprecedented for our area,” Dulewich said.
“We’re so heavily wooded up here that we don’t typically get the 80-kilometre, 90-kilometre winds. We’re standing there fighting fires and shingles are blowing off roofs — that’s weather we don’t see up here typically.”
And while wildfire evacuees are spread across the province in hotels or other facilities awaiting the all-clear to return home, their pets are also getting a safe haven, thanks to the Winnipeg Humane Society, which has set up a temporary shelter at the St. Norbert Community Centre.
The humane society’s Carly Peters told 680 CJOB’s The Start there’s currently space for about 60 animals. Pets will be housed in their own kennels, be fed and walked daily, and families will be able to visit at designated times.
We will continue to work with the Red Cross on increasing capacity as needed,” Peters said.
“There’s always ways to pivot and find extra space and hopefully we can support as many animals as we can.”
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