First a heat wave with temperatures of up to 50 degrees, then a fire: the Canadian town of Lytton has been almost completely destroyed. There is also a fire in California.
Vancouver / Sacramento – For days the Canadian town of Lytton made headlines with ever new heat records – now an inferno of flames has almost completely destroyed the community: The small town was overrun by a roller of fire in a very short time.
Canadian MP Brad Vis announced that 90 percent of Lytton had burned down, including the whole town center. More than 1000 people had to flee in a hurry.
He saw white smoke on the southern edge of the town and 15 to 20 minutes later the flames had hit the whole city, said Mayor Jan Polderman according to Canadian media. Photos and videos showed completely charred rows of houses and streets. There were initially no official figures on possible victims. Power and telephone connections were interrupted in many places. The people had fled in all directions to more distant places, it said.
Record heat records
Before the fire disaster, Lytton, which is around 260 kilometers northeast of Vancouver, had recorded heat records for three days in a row. According to the weather agency, the thermometer showed 49.6 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, the highest temperature recorded in Canada. The fire on an area of 65 square kilometers was “out of control”, said the authorities. The weather is still dry, hot and windy.
In other parts of the Canadian province of British Columbia, dozens of forest fires had broken out within 24 hours, many as a result of lightning strikes.
Hot and dry weather with violent winds aggravated the fire situation in California as well. In the north of the most populous US state, over a thousand firefighters fought three major forest fires on Thursday. One of the fires near the village of Weed has spread to over 80 square kilometers. Several thousand people had been asked to leave their homes in the danger zone. Despite a large-scale operation by the fire brigade lasting several days, the flames were only 25 percent contained on Thursday.
In 2020, California experienced the most devastating forest fire season in terms of area since records began. The fires raged particularly hard from mid-August to the end of October. More than 30 people were killed and over 10,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed. dpa
