“We fought the equivalent of 100 years of fires in one night”: Canada battled huge blazes on multiple fronts on Friday that forced authorities to order the evacuation of an entire far north city and a region of British Columbia of 2,000 people threatened km away.

It’s a real race against time that has begun in Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, where around 20,000 residents had until Friday noon to leave. A particularly complicated mass evacuation given that the region is isolated and the nearest reception center is more than a thousand kilometers away.

In West Kelowna, British Columbia, about 400 km from Vancouver, firefighters and authorities said they had spent an “extremely difficult” night.

Whether by road or air, the Yellowknife evacuation “is going very well,” Disaster Relief Minister Harjit Sajjan said at a news conference. But “the situation remains very difficult,” said Secretary of Defense Bill Blair.

With bags on their backs and in hand, residents had formed in long lines Thursday to try to snag a seat on emergency evacuation flights as smoke from wildfires already hung over the city.

Arlene Talbot, a resident of Yellowknife, told CBC that she paid C$1,000 for a one-way ticket on a scheduled flight to Edmonton.

“I’m mentally exhausted, I think most people are, because the situation is extremely concerning,” she said.

Frank Higgins, who also lives in Yellowknife, told Canadian Public TV that he was preparing to drive very long hours and that he set off without really knowing where to go. “Maybe in Saskatchewan,” he said, filling his vehicle with gas.

The army was mobilized to help with the evacuation. About 1,500 residents have already fled the area by air and hundreds more by land, authorities said. Twice as many flights are planned for Friday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is due to go to an evacuation center in Edmonton, about 1,000 kilometers from Yellowknife, on Friday evening, his office said in the afternoon.

– “Mother Nature was too strong” –

In West Kelowna (population more than 30,000), British Columbia, “a significant number” of homes burned, according to authorities. Evacuation has already been ordered for some areas.

According to a press release, a state of emergency was also declared over Lake Okanagan in Kelowna (about 150,000 people) and airspace in the area was closed “to assist in aerial firefighting.”

Thursday night was “probably one of the toughest nights of my career,” said West Kelowna Fire Chief Jason Brolund.

“We fought the equivalent of 100 years of fires in one night,” he told reporters.

“Every effort has been made to mitigate the effects of the fire. But in the end, Mother Nature was too strong,” admitted Kelowna local official Loyal Wooldridge. And “unfortunately we’re not off the hook yet. Last night could well be a foretaste of what awaits us in the coming days.”

According to Jason Brolund, the winds are actually even stronger than the day before.

Also in Yellowknife, there were fears that the wind would not benefit firefighters and that the fire would reach the city by the weekend.

Canada has faced extreme weather events in recent years, increased in intensity and frequency by global warming, and is experiencing a record-breaking wildfire season this year.

More than a thousand fires are currently ravaging the country from east to west, including more than 230 in the Northwest Territories and more than 370 in British Columbia.

Since Canada’s wildfire season began, 168,000 Canadians have been evacuated across the country and 14 million hectares — about the size of Greece — have burned, double the last record set in 1989.