'A wonderful feeling': Wildfire evacuation order ends for 7,000 from Labrador City

Labrador City, N.L. -

Labrador City residents who were ordered to evacuate last week after the reignition of a once-smouldering fire near the town were allowed to return home Monday.

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey said the evacuation order officially lifted at noon, though essential workers and their families had returned over the weekend. 

In a video livestreamed on Facebook, Labrador City Mayor Belinda Adams welcomed residents home Monday.

"It's been a lot, but guess what? We're on the other end of it. It's a wonderful feeling," Adams said. "We couldn't go over it, we couldn't go under it, we had to go through it. And we did go through it together." 

The mayor extended thanks to the many firefighters that tackled the blaze and members of the community who supported one another during the evacuation order that had lasted for more than one week.

More than 7,000 residents of Labrador City were ordered to leave the evening of July 12 after an abrupt change in weather conditions caused a previously smouldering blaze to grow from six to about 140 square kilometres. The fire advanced 21 km toward Labrador City in just four hours.

Municipal officials asked residents to head east to Happy Valley-Goose Bay, N.L., a six-hour drive along the remote, two-lane Trans-Labrador Highway. There were approximately 200 health-care workers displaced when the evacuation order in Labrador City was issued, Furey said.

Adams said the evacuation of Labrador City was the biggest in the province's history, "and we didn't have so much as a person hurt, we had no fatalities, we kept our infrastructure with the fire on the heels of the hospital with the sprinklers on it … we didn't lose any homes."

"These are all things that a lot of communities face when they go through a forest fire of the magnitude that we had, so we are very grateful and I know the community is very grateful," she continued. 

Adams said the fire that had threatened the city is now "very low risk," adding that rain was helping crews douse hot spots. Furey said the fire is a Category 1 blaze — the lowest on a scale of six — with the fire smouldering near ground level.

Fire crews are focused on extinguishing the northern and eastern edges of the fire, Adams said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 22, 2024.

— By Lyndsay Armstrong in Halifax.