WINNIPEG — Ken Lachnit had done what he could. All that remained was prayer.
For three days this spring, Lachnit and dozens of other volunteer firefighters had labored to beat back a fast-growing wildfire as it advanced on his hometown of Woodridge, a hamlet 60 miles southeast of Winnipeg.
Some plowed fire breaks with bulldozers. Helicopters dropped water along the edges of the blaze. Lachnit, a 66-year-old who normally works as the town’s mechanic, was assigned to sprinkler duty, erecting a wall of sprinkler systems around Woodridge and nearby towns — the last line of defense.
On the fourth day, when Lachnit set out to work, what he saw scared him. The fire was spreading too fast, growing sevenfold overnight. Just two miles from Woodridge, flames licked the treetops. The sky was bright orange, embers dancing in gusts of wind.
Ken Lachnit, 66, a mechanic in Woodridge, Manitoba, worked to beat back the wildfire as it bore down on his town. (Carlos Gonzalez/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
“We chased it from Kerry, Badger, St. Labre, and then it was coming toward Woodridge,” Lachnit recalled. “We lost one house in St. Labre. It was a family house. They just couldn’t get to it, the smoke was too thick.”
Canada’s wildfires have scorched more than 25,000 square miles of forest this year, spawning hurricane-sized plumes of smoke that have forced Minnesotans indoors, ignited political tensions and given the state some of the worst air quality in the world on several occasions this summer.
But in Manitoba, which is experiencing its worst wildfire season in 30 years, the fires have devastated communities and taken a serious human toll.
This year, more than 72,000 Canadians have been forced to evacuate their homes, with thousands of Manitobans still displaced, a government spokesperson told the Minnesota Star Tribune.