Residents of Cranberry Portage hurried to evacuate Saturday night as a massive out-of-control wildfire near Flin Flon moved toward the area.
A forest fire 38 kilometres long and 12 kilometres wide has moved within one kilometre of Cranberry Portage, located southeast of Flin Flon, the province said in its fourth fire bulletin on Sunday afternoon.
“When we woke up, the whole town was completely covered in smoke, it was smoky outside, you could smell the fire, ashes were falling from the sky,” said Bailey Anderson.
“So we’re just waiting to hear what was going on when the sirens started going off and they had patrol officers telling people that they need to leave immediately.”
The wildfire has also caused intermittent power outages, with Manitoba Hydro’s outage map showing just under 800 people affected by outages in the area around Cranberry Portage as of 6 p.m. Sunday.
Keith Jaeger, 24, was out quadding Saturday night and while it was getting dark outside, he said the sky started to get brighter as he neared Cranberry Portage.
Video sent to CBC News by Jaeger shows flames off in the distance over First Cranberry Lake. It also shows the smoke-filled sky as he drove on Highway 10 toward The Pas.
WATCH | Massive out-of-control-wildfire that led to evacuation:
Keith Jaeger was out with friends Saturday night before evacuating Cranberry Portage. He grabbed his camera to document the blaze and the smoke-filled skies while heading to The Pas.
“It’s definitely scary initially because you see it in videos and stuff like that, it doesn’t look as big as it is,” he said. “It’s an experience you don’t have to see something of that size and that magnitude.”
His thoughts are also with the first responders currently battling the blaze.
“That looks terrifying, even from afar it looks terrifying,” he said.
“I couldn’t imagine going in there and doing that type of work, they’re doing really important stuff in there, saving communities and stuff like that, saving people’s livelihood.”
Some Cranberry Portage residents also in Thompson
Other Cranberry Portage residents like Debbie Sinclair described the flames as something they’d never seen before.
“It was unbelievable, I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Sinclair from a hotel room in Thompson Sunday.
“The flames were just unbelievable, further down the lake you could just see it, there was so much smoke.”
Sinclair and her family originally tried to go to Flin Flon, but she says they were turned away by people on the front lines when they were hardly outside of Cranberry Portage. She said her family wasn’t home when door knocking happened to let residents know they had to evacuate to The Pas.
So they drove back through Cranberry Portage to get gas before heading to Thompson.
“There was a lot of smoke in the community, people were waiting their turns to get gas and people were just going,” she said. “And then on our way out of Cranberry Portage, we were heading our way to Snow Lake and after Simon House, we ended up seeing that there was more smoke and it must have been the direction that we were going because we could see flames again.”
“As we were going on the highway, it got darker and darker and there was ashes falling from the sky,” she said.
Sinclair said it was such a sprint to leave, she packed for everyone else but forgot her luggage.
“We had to do what we had to do,” said Sinclair. “As long as we were together it was like you know what, the material things are things that we can replace as long as we have each other.”
“That’s all that we thought about, we just need to get out of there.”
The blaze was first detected on Thursday and is deemed out-of-control on the province’s wildfire map. It has grown to about 35,000 hectares (or 86,486 acres) thanks to high winds and drought conditions, up from the about 3,000 hectares (more than 7,400 acres) reported as of Saturday afternoon.
The fire and smoky conditions prompted the closure of Highway 10 from Highway 39 (south of Cranberry Portage) to Flin Flon. Sherridon Access Road, or Highway 800, is also closed at Highway 10.
Jessica Genaille is also staying at the same Thompson hotel as Sinclair and said she hopes a better fire protocol is developed in the wake of the blaze.
There is a siren in Cranberry Portage to warn residents when they have to leave, but Genaille also said more information should be communicated to the public earlier when possible.
“We’re in northern Manitoba, we are surrounded by fires, we are surrounded by deep, thick bush … it goes up in flames instantly, we need more resources up here,” she said.
WATCH | Emergency crews wade through forest fire near Cranberry Portage:
Hundreds of residents in a small Manitoba community were told to evacuate the area as a wildfire near Flin Flon continues to burn out of control.
Students safely evacuated, superintendent says
Hundreds of Frontier Collegiate students also had to rush out of their dorm as the wildfire drew closer to Cranberry Portage. The school is host to students from more than 20 communities across northern Manitoba, many of which have no high school.
Chief superintendent of the Frontier School Division Reg Klassen said about 250 students were bussed out of town.
“Some students went home last night already because their communities are close, and then some students flew home this morning and we’re making arrangements for all students to go home this week,” he said.
“So we’re not going to get back into Cranberry Portage in the next day or two, simply because there is no power.”