Smoke conditions force evacuation of 300

Sandy Lake is evacuating about 300 phase-one evacuees to Thunder Bay due to smoke from forest fires.
“Yesterday we started medivacing phase-one people,” said Sandy Lake Chief Bart Meekis on July 30. “The smoke yesterday was really bad — it touched the ground because of no wind.”
While there are currently about four or five smaller fires burning near Sandy Lake, Meekis said most of the smoke is coming from bigger fires in Manitoba and near Deer Lake.
“We had a little bit of wind today and it kind of lifted (the smoke) up,” Meekis said. “When it becomes calm in the evenings or early in the morning, it settles into the community.”
About 72 community members were evacuated to Thunder Bay on July 29 and another 230 were scheduled for evacuation on July 30 and 31 in the phase-one evacuation, which includes all high-risk community members, such as infants, prenatal, elderly and people with chronic respiratory conditions.
Meekis said some phase-one evacuees did not want to leave the community, but the chief and council encouraged them to leave because of their health.
“We don’t want to lose anybody,” Meekis said. “It’s actually better to be cautious than not be cautious.”
Meekis said the forest fire situation is not as serious this year because the forest burned down near the community last year provides a barrier to nearby forest fires.
“Those fires from last year are preventing the fire from coming in,” Meekis said.
Meekis said the closest forest fires, including Red Lake 66 and Red Lake 58, are burning back onto their burned-over area due to a shift in the wind.
And a larger fire located about 30 kilometres north of Sandy Lake, Red Lake 60, also burned back onto its path.
“It was a big fire, but because of the wind direction, it burned back to where it came from so it is burning itself out too,” Meekis said. “It depends on where the wind is coming from.”
Northwestern Ontario had 66 active forest fires on July 29. The region had 476 forest fires to date, which burned 69,204 hectares of forest.
The Red Lake district had 31 actives forest fires on July 29, Sioux Lookout had 17, Nipigon had 10, Thunder Bay had two, Kenora had one and Dryden had none.
Ontario had 1,196 forest fires to date, considerably higher than last year’s number of 689 forest fires and the 10-year average of 646 forest fires.
While the 120,092 hectares of forest burned to date this year is considerably lower than last year’s total of 630,855 hectares, it is nearing the 10-year average of 125,032 hectares.
Most of Sandy Lake’s 2,741 community members were evacuated to 11 locations throughout Ontario and Manitoba in 2011 due to smoke from forest fires.