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Residents in a rural area of Halifax County were issued a mandatory evacuation order Thursday evening as the Mooseland Road wildfire continued to burn and dry conditions challenged firefighters.
An emergency alert sent around 8 p.m. AT stated residents along a 22-kilometre stretch from civic address 4315 Mooseland Rd. down to Highway 7 needed to “evacuate right away.” The Halifax Regional Municipality estimated the evacuation impacts 100 to 150 people.
As of 6 p.m. AT, the wildfire — about 100 kilometres east of the city — in the Jacket Lake area was estimated to be more than 300 hectares.
“We’ve had some pretty hard conditions out there today with the weather and the dryness of the forests,” Jim Rudderham, director of fleet and wildfire management for the Department of Natural Resources, told CBC News on Thursday evening before the evacuation was ordered.
“We worked very hard to control it, but it’s defeating us a little bit right now.”
Evacuees were told to register at Red Cross evacuation centres at Musquodoboit Rural High in Middle Musquodoboit and Marine Drive Academy in Sheet Harbour.
Fire began Wednesday
Rudderham said the fire began late Wednesday evening, but that dry and hot conditions helped it spread on Thursday.
“The first call came for this late [Wednesday] evening. Of course it came in well after our planes were down for the day and everything was down for the day. We were out there last evening with crews and again this morning and the planes were back this morning,” he said.
Environment Canada said showers in the forecast for the area Thursday evening were expected to end after midnight, with a mix of sun and cloud expected Friday.
Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency was assisting DNR in its firefighting efforts. People were being advised to stay away from the area.
DNR said two of its helicopters and four fixed-wing water bombers were on site. Two fixed-wing water bombers were also en route to help from Newfoundland, it said.
The municipality said firefighting operations would pause overnight and resume at first light Friday “for safety reasons.”
Nova Scotia Power said an outage in the area affecting 167 customers late Thursday afternoon was caused by the fire.
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