Minnesota activates air quality alert for smoke coming from wildfires in Canada

Minnesota activated an air quality alert this Sunday for smoke coming from the more than 100 active wildfires in Canada. It is not the only state that saw its air quality worsen due to particulates emitted by Canadian fires.

Several localities from Montana to Wisconsin experienced the consequences of this event although the most affected was undoubtedly Minnesota where authorities issued the air quality alert on Sunday. The warning will remain in effect until Monday morning when, the National Weather Service said, pollution from the fire will gradually dissipate:

According to ABC News, the air quality index (AQI) for much of northern Minnesota stood between 150 and 200 on Sunday. This level is "unhealthy" and, in fact, at certain times during the day, the index exceeded the 200 AQI mark, making it a "very unhealthy" area.

Canada continues to fight fires

For its part, Canada continues to face the fire. Authorities in this country were forced to issue evacuation orders for residents of British Columbia. Specifically, thousands of residents of the Northern Rockies Regional Municipality and Fort Nelson First Nations were evacuated as the fire approached the locality.

The mayor of the Northern Rockies, Rob Fraser, assured during a television interview that the vast majority of the 3,500 people living in and around Fort Nelson had been evacuated. In that same conversation, the councilman told CBC News that the fire started after a gust of high winds knocked down a tree that crashed into a power line and ended up engulfed in flames: "And then by the time our firefighters were able to get down there, the wind had whipped this up into a fire that they weren't able to handle with the apparatus that we had," Fraser said.

The Northern Rockies were not the only locality affected by the more than 100 active fires in Canada. Authorities in Alberta also urged caution among its residents and notified residents of the Fort McMurray oil hub, which already faced massive wildfires in 2016, to prepare to leave if the situation worsened.