Canadian military evacuates Fort Hope as wildfires destroy Collins First Nation, smoke chokes US East Coast

A cluster of fast-moving wildfires in northern Ontario has destroyed the remote Collins First Nation and forced the Canadian military to prepare an airlift of 600 residents from Fort Hope, as thick smoke drifted south and triggered air quality alerts across the eastern United States.

Collins First Nation reduced to ash

Residents of Namaygoosisagagun, also known as Collins First Nation, fled by boat on Monday night after flames reached the shore. More than 30 homes, the school, the administrative building, the community centre, warehouses and vehicles were consumed. Miya Paavola, who escaped with her family in an aluminium boat, described the moment the flames touched the water.

If we had waited a little longer, we would have died.

Chief Helen Paavola was away when the fire broke out and could not reach her children for hours. She later learned that all residents had survived, but her own house was among those lost. Linda Debassige, Grand Council Chief of the Anishinabek Nation, said the community received no official support during the evacuation.

If they had waited for official help, we would now be searching for the bodies of children, elders, men and women.

Military airlift for Fort Hope

Emergency Preparedness Minister Eleanor Olszewski announced late Friday that the Canadian Armed Forces would use aircraft to evacuate Fort Hope, a community of about 600 people in northwestern Ontario. The area has few roads and depends heavily on air transport. Thousands of residents from other affected zones have already been moved south to larger urban centres in Ontario.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said more than 80 fires were burning out of control in the province. The province requested federal assistance on Thursday, and firefighters from Alberta and Yukon have been deployed. Over 80 firefighting aircraft and helicopters are operating in Ontario, with another 39 aircraft ready to reach isolated communities inaccessible by land.

Smoke blankets the US East Coast

Winds carried smoke across the border, prompting the US Environmental Protection Agency's AirNow site to classify air quality as unhealthy across a wide area. By 8:00 a.m. ET on Saturday, the unhealthy designation covered southern Ontario, eastern Ohio, West Virginia, most of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, large parts of Virginia, and all of Maryland, Delaware and Washington D.C. Parts of eastern Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh, were rated very unhealthy. AirNow forecast that conditions would improve during the day.

AccuWeather predicted only minimal impact from the smoke on Sunday's World Cup final at New York New Jersey Stadium.

Political friction and expert response

President Donald Trump blamed what he called inadequate Canadian forest management for the smoke and threatened new tariffs. Wildfire experts pushed back, noting that roughly half of Canada's fires ignite in uninhabited areas or near small Indigenous communities, often accessible only by air.

Michael Flannigan, a wildfire management specialist at Thompson Rivers University, told the New York Times that aerial resources can buy time but cannot extinguish fires alone.

Aerial means help buy time so that ground forces can put out the fire. Fires are ultimately extinguished by firefighters operating on the ground.

He added that most fires in these remote regions are caused by lightning and spread rapidly before crews can respond within the critical first 30 minutes. Even a significant increase in resources would not change the outcome, he said.

Even if we spent much more money, I don't think we could stop these fires.

Scale of the crisis

According to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, 955 fires were active across the country as of Saturday, with 206 out of control and 69 new starts overnight. The total area burned this year reached 28,500 square kilometres, roughly double the 16,000 square kilometres recorded a week earlier, though still below the five-year average. The current season is less severe than the record-breaking 2023 season, but intensity has increased over the past week.