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VANCOUVER: More evacuations were ordered Monday in western Canada, where thousands of people have fled forest fires threatening several small towns and aboriginal communities.
By late Monday some 5,000 people had been evacuated in the west and southern Interior regions of British Columbia, and emergency officials issued new orders to leave.
Fire conditions are ranked high to extreme in most of the tinder-dry forests of Canada's westernmost province, where hundreds of fires are burning and dozens of new blazes are starting each day.
"We've had a heat wave and temperatures that we're not used to, and we've also experienced a lot of dry lightning," provincial fire information officer Alyson Couch told AFP. "We're crossing our fingers for rain but it looks like it will continue to be warm and dry."
Couch said about 63,000 hectares (155,700 acres) had been scorched by some 2,200 fires in British Columbia since April 1, nearly double the number in early August of 2004, the previous worst year on record.
A forestry service bulletin ranked 98 of the currently active fires as "large" or "of note" because they threaten human communities.
Thousands of firefighters - including more than 800 brought in from other provinces - are battling the blazes, aided by air tankers and helicopters dropping fire-retardant. The province has imposed a ban on open fires.
As of Monday, no deaths or injuries due to fire had been reported. Only three homes, all in the Okanagan region, had burned, said Couch.
One air tanker crashed into a lake last month, but the pilot escaped safely.
The areas hardest-hit have been the Central Okanagan, a tourism and wine-growing resort 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Vancouver, and communities near the historic gold rush town of Lillooet, 213 kilometres (132 miles) to the northeast.
Most residents of Lillooet, a town of 3,000, had evacuated as fire raged less than one kilometer away on Mount Mclean, said Jerry Sucharyna, the local economic development officer.
"The fire is not contained... because it spread so quickly we do not even know how large it is," Sucharyna said. "There is no end to this."
By Monday afternoon the evacuation was extended to nearby aboriginal communities of Kayoosh First Nations and Bridge River, said a provincial bulletin.
In the Okanagan, emergency officials reported little progress Monday on a fire covering 7,000 hectares (17,300 acres) on Terrace Mountain near West Kelowna.
There was no word on when the 2,500 current evacuees would be able to return home. "We're at the mercy of the fire," emergency spokesman Bruce Smith told AFP.
Since last month some 20,000 people in the Central Okanagan have been either evacuated or told to be ready to flee instantly. Most are now back home with two of three area fires under control.
A fire last week near the ski resort of Whistler, the alpine venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics here, is completely under control, said the forestry minister.
Fires were of concern even in the metropolis of Vancouver, where police said Monday that arson is suspected in four small fires started in Stanley Park, a forest adjacent to the city centre.
Throughout the province in recent days lightning sparked 82 new fires, while another nine were caused by people, said a forestry bulletin.
- AFP/yb
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