The Canadian military is preparing today to evacuate the residents of a remote community of 600 people threatened by wildfires that have spread, choking a wide swath of the United States in smoke.

Emergency Management Minister Eleanor Olshefsky said late Friday that the armed forces will use aircraft to evacuate residents of Fort Hope in sparsely populated northwestern Ontario, where some of the most intense fires are raging.

The area has few roads and relies heavily on air transport. Thousands of people have already been evacuated from affected areas to cities further south in Ontario.

Large wildfires have become an annual occurrence in Canada, home to some of the world’s largest forests. Climate experts say that rising temperatures have dried out the forests and increased the risk of fire.

The federal Ministry of Natural Resources stated today that 69 new fires were reported overnight in Canada, bringing the total to 955.

In total, the area burned so far is nearly 11,000 square miles (28,500 square kilometers), well below the five-year average. However, winds carried the smoke south of the border, prompting authorities to issue air quality alerts and health warnings in parts of the United States.

By 8:00 a.m. ET (3:00 p.m. Greek time), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow website classified air quality as “unhealthy” in an area that includes southern Ontario, eastern parts of Ohio and West Virginia, most of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, much of Virginia, and all of Maryland, Delaware, and Washington.

Parts of eastern Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh, were classified as “very unhealthy.” AirNow predicts that air quality in those areas will improve throughout the day.

Smoke from the wildfires in Canada will have only a minimal impact on tomorrow’s World Cup final, which will be held at New York-New Jersey Stadium, AccuWeather predicted on Friday.

U.S. President Donald Trump blamed the situation on the inadequacy, as he described it, of Canada’s forest management regarding the smoke and said he would add the “incalculable cost” of addressing the pollution to existing tariffs on Canadian products.

Following Trump’s comments, Olszewski stated that Canada has invested 12 billion Canadian dollars (8.56 billion U.S. dollars) in forest sustainability and fire prevention since 2020, as the country faces increasingly dry and hot weather conditions.

Source: APE-MPE

*File photo