HALIFAX — Three weeks after the Long Lake wildfire in western Nova Scotia forced evacuations and eventually destroyed 20 homes in Annapolis County, fire officials said some evacuation orders would be lifted Wednesday.
Of the almost 500 orders imposed on individual dwellings since Aug. 13, residents living at 360 civic addresses were told Tuesday they would be allowed to return home on a staggered schedule.
“(The province) takes assessing the potential for re-entry very seriously and only recommends it when we’re confident that it is safe," Natural Resources Department spokesman Jim Rudderham told an online briefing.
Provincial officials could not say how many people would be affected by the change, but they had previously indicated that more than 1,000 people in total had been told to evacuate their homes in recent weeks.
Dustin Enslow, deputy warden of Annapolis County, said the decision to lift the orders could be quickly reversed if the fire threatens those areas again.
"We want to make it aware that we are still in an active forest fire situation," Enslow said. "So just because you are returning home, does not mean that we're completely out of the woods yet."
The fire broke out last month near Long Lake, a sparsely populated rural area about 20 kilometres south of Bridgetown, N.S., which is part of Annapolis County. At the time, the fire had quickly grown from three to four square kilometres.
On the weekend of Aug. 23-24, the fire more than doubled in size with strong winds feeding the flames as they advanced toward the community of West Dalhousie, about six kilometres north of Long Lake.
Four days later, officials confirmed the fire had destroyed 20 homes and 11 other buildings. Not all of the homes were primary residences.
The fire has continued to burn out of control amid drought-like conditions, but its advance to the north and east has been stalled by the creation of large fire breaks cut from the woods with heavy equipment.
As a result, homes in the Trout Lake and Highway 10 areas are no longer subject to evacuation orders, Rudderham said. But he said the orders would remain in place for about 140 civic addresses, most of them in the West Dalhousie area.
"It's still too unsafe in that area," Rudderham said, adding that light rain on the weekend was welcomed by firefighters on the ground but did little to douse the flames. "It was very spotty."
As of Tuesday afternoon, the fire had grown to cover 84 square kilometres, but there were no new reports of damage.
Still, stressed-out residents have grown weary of dealing with the acrid smell of smoke. Many were spotted wearing facemasks while outside on the weekend.
Scott Tingley, Nova Scotia's forest protection manager, said progress had been made to contain the northern edge of the fire, but he said strong winds were making firefighting difficult along the fire's southern edge.
"And we're back in to a drying trend," Tingley said, adding there is very little rain in the latest weather forecasts.
Exhausted local firefighters in Nova Scotia are receiving help from 61 colleagues from Ontario and 40 from Quebec. Nova Scotia is using 10 helicopters to attack the flames, as well as four 802 Air Tractor aircraft from the Northwest Territories.
Meanwhile, one wildfire in northeastern New Brunswick continued to burn out of control on Tuesday. The Beaver Lake Stream wildfire in Northumberland County, first reported Aug. 14, covers about five square kilometres.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, the Udjuktok Bay fire in eastern Labrador also continued to burn out of control, about 50 kilometres northwest of Postville. It was first reported on Aug. 8 and had grown to about five square kilometres by Tuesday.
On Saturday, the Newfoundland and Labrador government lifted all remaining evacuation alerts for communities affected by a wildfire in Conception Bay North, where about 200 homes and other buildings have been destroyed since the fire started on Aug. 4.
All evacuation orders for the area were lifted by Friday, when the fire was classified as being held.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 2, 2025.
Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press
