About 12,000 residents of the Williams Lake area in the wildfire-ravaged interior of British Columbia have been given the go-ahead to return home.
An evacuation order for the city and the surrounding area was downgraded to an evacuation alert Thursday afternooon.
The order had been in place for nearly two weeks after a wildfire moved toward the city on July 15.
Williams Lake Mayor Walt Cobb said the alert means anyone who chooses to return home should be prepared to leave again on short notice should the wildfire situation change.
“Welcome home”: Williams Lake Mayor Walt Cobb welcomes back more than 12,000 evacuated #bcwildfire pic.twitter.com/TxAGSnYtWP
— CBC British Columbia (@cbcnewsbc) July 27, 2017
“The wildfires near our community are not 100 per cent contained and due to the changing weather conditions an evacuation could happen and the alert will remain in effect,” Cobb said. “So, welcome home and please be as orderly in your return as you were during the evacuation.”
Speaking to reporters on a teleconference call BC’s Public Safety Minister and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth urged residents to use “an abundance of caution” before rushing home.
“We all understand that lives were disrupted in Williams Lake and we understand the desire to go home and to have and get back to your normal routine and have some semblance of normality back,” Farnworth said. “But our first priority and foremost interest must be public safety.”
Farnworth urged everyone who decides to return to the affected areas to register with local authorities to receive emergency text notifications in case of another evacuation order.
There are 148 fires still burning across the province, including 14 new fires that started Wednesday, said BC’s Chief fire information officer Kevin Skrepnek.
Since the beginning of the wildfire season in April, provincial authorities have responded to 794 wildfires across the province that have burned over 379,000 hectares, Skrepnek said. The province alone has spent over $154 million to fight the wildfires, he said.
Over 4,000 people from British Columbia, other Canadian provinces and as far as Australia have been involved in the firefighting effort, Skrepnek said.
Over 200 aircraft have been deployed to fight the wildfires.
Authorities are bracing for more fires set off by lightening, he said.
With files from CBC News
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