Military aids evacuations as Canada wildfires expand eastward [Video]

Canada’s military used aircraft to help evacuate members of a remote Indigenous group Monday as wildfires spread eastward from the Prairies region and into the country’s most populous province Ontario.

An airlift of Sandy Lake First Nation members started over the weekend as a 156,346-hectare blaze overwhelmed firefighting efforts and brushed up against the remote Indigenous community.

Wildfires in recent weeks have swept across densely wooded parts of the vast Prairies forcing more than 30,000 people in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba to flee their homes.

The latter two provinces have declared states of emergency.

The evacuation of Sandy Lake, an isolated community about 600 kilometers (370 miles) north of Thunder Bay with no road access, is the largest mobilization so far in Ontario.

Currently the fires are raging in the province’s sparsely populated northwest corner and have so far not threatened the densely inhabited south, which includes Toronto and its suburbs — home to some seven million people.

As …