Canadian military to air-evacuate Fort Hope as wildfire smoke spreads into U.S.
The Canadian armed forces will use aircraft to evacuate the remote community of Fort Hope in northwestern Ontario, while smoke from the fires triggers air-quality alerts across parts of the United States.
The Canadian military is preparing to air-lift roughly 600 residents out of Fort Hope, a remote northwestern Ontario community threatened by intense forest fires, federal Emergencies Minister Eleanor Olszewski said on Friday. The operation will rely on aircraft because the region has few road connections and depends heavily on air travel.
The fires, part of a season that has produced 955 separate blazes and burned nearly 11,000 square miles, have also generated a plume of smoke that has drifted south of the border. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow system reported “unhealthy” air quality across a swath that includes southern Ontario, parts of Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C., with western Pennsylvania reaching “very unhealthy” levels.
Health officials in the United States have issued alerts and warnings, though forecasts suggest conditions will improve later in the day. The smoke is expected to have only a minimal effect on the upcoming soccer World Cup final in New York-New Jersey, according to AccuWeather.
President Donald Trump blamed “incompetent Canadian forest management” for the pollution and said the cost of dealing with the smoke would be added to existing tariffs on Canadian goods. > "Canada has invested C$12 billion in forest sustainability and fire prevention since 2020," Olszewski responded, noting the country's efforts to address drier, warmer weather conditions that increase fire risk.