The Manitoba government has declared a provincial state of emergency once again, as wildfires continue to devastate parts of northern Manitoba.
Premier Wab Kinew announced the decision Thursday afternoon, saying the state of emergency officially took effect at 12:01 p.m.
"The primary reason that we have called this latest state of emergency is because we need access to more facilities to be able to shelter this large number of Manitobans who are being forced to flee their homes due to wildfires," he explains.
Kristin Hayward, assistant deputy minister responsible for the Manitoba Wildfire Service (MWS), says there are currently 105 active wildfires across the province, with 261 to date. The 20 year average is 197.
More than one million hectares (ha) of land have burned as of July 8—an unprecedented figure.
"The 20-year average, to (July 8) would only be 94,000 ha. So, what we're looking at is somewhere in the neighbourhood of nearly 11 times the 20-year average for hectares burned. This is the worst year in our 30-year electronic record."
She says the second worst year was in 2013, when just over 720,000 ha burned.
While most fires of note are in Manitoba's north, Hayward says in the eastern region, the Nopiming fire (EA061) has grown about 20km to the north.
This has resulted in the closure of several parks in the region.
Hayward says there are 145 out-of-province personnel in Manitoba assisting in battling wildfires.
"This includes 100 firefighters from Mexico, 25 personnel from Minnesota... an 11-person incident management team from Parks Canada, and (Wednesday) night we had a seven-person incident management team arrive from New Zealand."
Kinew extended gratitude to all those assisting on the front lines and those supporting evacuees.
"We're going to be coming forward asking for help again. So I really want to encourage us to work together the way that we did earlier in this wildfire season," he says.
"This is a wildfire season that's setting records in all the wrong ways, but Manitobans are responding in all the right ones."