Wildfires

Wildfires - Alberta, Canada

The massive wildfire burning around the oil sands hub of Fort McMurray was growing and moving rapidly north late on Monday, forcing firefighters to shift their focus to protecting major oil sand facilities north of the city, officials said.

The sudden movement of the fire prompted the evacuation of some 4,000 people from work camps outside Fort McMurray, with all northbound traffic once again cut off at the city, the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo said.

The entire population of Fort McMurray, about 90,000 people, was forced to flee nearly two weeks ago as the uncontrolled wildfire raged through some neighbourhoods and destroyed about 15 percent of structures.

On Monday, the blaze continued to burn uncontrolled, now covering 285,000 hectares (704,000 acres), officials said. By Monday evening it was moving 30 to 40 meters (98 to 131 feet) every minute and had jumped a critical firebreak north of the city to push into the oil sand camp areas.

Roughly a million barrels per day of oil sands crude production was shut in as a precaution and because of disruptions to regional pipelines, and much of that production remains offline.

Wildfires - Nepal

Wildfires have destroyed more than 60,000 hectares of conserved forest in the national parks and conservation areas in Nepal this year/

As many as 19,300 hectares of forest in Bardiya National Park; 18,640 hectares in Chitwan National Park; 16,500 hectares in Banke National Park; 6,854 hectares in Shuklaphanta Wildlife Reserve; 2,605 hectares in Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park; six hectares in Khaptad National Park and one hectare in Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve was raged by the wildfires.

Records of five years show that Nepal witnessed the highest count of wildfires (around 2800) in the month of April alone.

Earlier in April, NASA had reported that as many as 1.3 million hectares (over 3.7 million acres) of forest cover in Nepal was affected by wildfires in two weeks till April 11. A record number of fires were reported in the country on April 10. NASA said the satellite imagery showed that 457 forests across the country were affected by fires with the worst affected being Sindhuli district, whose 40 per cent forest cover was reduced to ashes.