Candle Lake firebreak approved, voluntary wildfire evacuation advised
Representatives of Candle Lake say the province has approved a protective firebreak to fend off a rapidly approaching wildfire after local officials made public statements Tuesday asking for help.
An online notice from the resort village's administrators on Wednesday said the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) has granted permission for the firebreak in an effort to head off a wildfire from nearby Narrow Hills Provincial Park.
Candle Lake is about 80 kilometres northeast of Prince Albert, located between the northern city and Narrow Hills.
The blaze (known as 25VF-SHOE) has been burning since May 6 and was previously identified as two separate wildfires (SHOE and 25VF-CAMP). They have now merged and cover 216,000 hectares as of Wednesday — the largest active wildfire in the province.
Its southern edge reaches just 20 kilometres from Candle Lake, prompting the community's request to pre-emptively build a protective barrier before the fire travels any closer.
Work is set to begin on the firebreak immediately, according to Candle Lake's notice on social media. It will span from Minowukaw Beach, along Highway 120 toward the Highway 265 junction, to the east and south of Candle Lake.
A voluntary evacuation notice was issued as part of the update, encouraging people to consider leaving the area if possible.
'The goal of the Voluntary Evacuation is to reduce the number of people who will need to leave the Resort Village within a short period of time if a mandatory evacuation is required,' read the notice.
The post also asks that people cancel plans to visit Candle Lake at this time and to avoid staying in the area if they return to check on properties.
Candle Lake has been on a pre-evacuation notice since Sunday after it was previously included on an alert from May 15 to May 21. Approximately 1,160 people live in the resort village, according to census data.
The rural municipality of Torch River also continues to ask residents of nearby Choiceland, White Fox and Smeaton to remain on pre-evacuation alert due to the SHOE fire's proximity.
More than 5,800 people are currently on evacuation orders due to significant wildfires threatening their homes in northern Saskatchewan, according to an update from SPSA on Tuesday.
Vice-president of operations Steve Roberts said the province is seeing an intense early start to wildfire season, causing emergency orders in big numbers this past week. As of Wednesday, 17 fires were actively burning and almost the entire province was under extreme fire risk conditions.
'At this time in Saskatchewan, it is taking almost no effort to start a fire and they are extremely aggressive, growing extremely fast,' Roberts said in a news conference Tuesday.
Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation (PBCN) expanded its mandatory evacuation notice Tuesday for the northern community of Pelican Narrows after an initial warning for the area was issued Sunday. Chief Peter Beatty told CBC Saskatchewan around 4,000 residents had been notified to leave.
Another 400 people have also evacuated from Hall Lake and Brabant Lake, near Lac La Ronge, and 12 from the Whelan Bay area. Roberts said Whelan Bay is considering a full evacuation of residents as wildfire risks continue to grow.
Residents of East Trout Lake's subdivision and campground have also been evacuated, plus at least two people at Little Bear Lake campground, 600 workers from the Foran mine at McIlveena Bay, and around 500 people from Canoe Lake Cree First Nation.
Displaced evacuees have been provided accommodations in Prince Albert, Saskatoon, Regina, Lloydminster and Cold Lake.
The evacuation orders are in addition to previous ones issued for residents of Narrow Hills Provincial Park, Lower Fishing Lake and Piprell Lake.
Meanwhile, a fire that started northwest of Creighton on Sunday has swept over the Manitoba border. Although the town has not issued an evacuation order for its residents, the neighbouring Manitoba community of Flin Flon is on a pre-alert according to the Canadian Press.
— with files from Alec Salloum, Canadian Press
lkurz@postmedia.com
The Regina Leader-Post has created an Afternoon Headlines newsletter that can be delivered daily to your inbox so you are up to date with the most vital news of the day. Click here to subscribe. With some online platforms blocking access to the journalism upon which you depend, our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark leaderpost.com and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed. Click here to subscribe.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indianapolis Star
7 hours ago
- Indianapolis Star
'I failed Ms. Roberts': Council President Osili regrets forcible removal of harassment accuser
Indianapolis City-County Council President Vop Osili apologized two days after he ordered a sheriff's deputy to forcibly remove a woman from the June 9 council meeting when she refused to obey a time limit while speaking about alleged mistreatment by Mayor Joe Hogsett and his former right-hand man. Multiple councilors have criticized Osili for kicking out Lauren Roberts, a former Hogsett employee who has criticized the mayor's handling of her allegations that top aide Thomas Cook sexually harassed her in 2015. As Roberts read a statement asking why the city-commissioned report investigating those claims did not include evidence about texts from Hogsett that made her uncomfortable, Osili interrupted her and told her she had only two minutes, the standard time limit for public comment. Roberts, who said she had crowdfunded and taken off from work to travel to the meeting from her home in Denver, responded that she would take her time. She told Osili he was welcome to have law enforcement haul her out. When Roberts' time was up and she kept speaking, Osili told deputies to "remove anyone who is talking at this point." Officers pushed Roberts and her multiple supporters out of the room while she resisted and yelled at them to stop touching her. Osili said in his June 11 statement that he regretted his decision to remove Roberts and should have acted to deescalate the situation. "While I believe and practice upholding the longstanding council rules that limit public comment to two minutes per speaker," Osili said, "I regret the trauma to Ms. Roberts and her supporters. An already difficult moment for a survivor was made even harder. "As it is my responsibility to ensure the council conducts its business with decorum and civility, I should have called a recess, created space for calm, and shown a sensitivity in that emotionally charged moment. In that, I failed Ms. Roberts, my fellow councilors, and those who attended the meeting that evening." Outside the City-County Council Building, Roberts read aloud to media what she had hoped to tell councilors on Monday night. She later posted on social media that "what happened tonight is why some survivors (kill) ourselves." In his written statement, Osili commended the courage of Roberts and Caroline Ellert, a second Cook accuser who was one of three women to share her allegations with IndyStar last year. "As a result, the council will be enacting meaningful changes in how the issue of harassment and misconduct is relayed, addressed and accounted for in the future," Osili said in his statement. "While we did not create this problem, our members will ensure that harassment has no place in our city and county government." The council's Democratic caucus will soon introduce a proposal for reforms in city policy including appointing an independent inspector general to investigate potential violations and an independent human resources board to replace the city's current HR department. The council will discuss the remaining $300,000 it owes to Fisher Phillips, the law firm that investigated the alleged harassment, at a meeting of the Administration and Finance Committee. Councilors voted Monday to delay the bulk of the $450,000 bill after IndyStar revealed that the firm's 54-page report excluded Hogsett's late-night messages to Roberts and Ellert, which they had shared with investigators. Saying he felt "terrible" about Roberts' removal Monday, Councilor Frank Mascari, chair of the Administration and Finance Committee, said he will allow alleged victims to speak for 20 minutes or more at the June 17 meeting at 5:30 p.m. Osili said he supports that move and "will be listening and learning." In a June 10 interview with IndyStar, Hogsett acknowledged that Roberts was discomfited by personal texts he sent her mentioning her boyfriend and calling her "feisty," and Ellert by his questions about her poetry preferences. He added that in the 24-hour endeavor that is a modern political campaign, "it has become easier to develop a casual conversation style with those who you happen to work very closely with." "It was not my intent to cause anybody any discomfort or make them feel uncomfortable. ... But I do in retrospect understand how that may have been something that I change (moving forward)," Hogsett told IndyStar. Hogsett said he has no intention to resign despite three councilors' calls for him to do so, two of which have come in the past two weeks since the law firm's report was released May 29. On Monday, Osili called Hogsett's texts to the women more than 30 years younger than the mayor "odd" and "strange," but said they weren't serious enough to warrant Hogsett's resignation. Roberts, however, said Monday that Osili and other councilors are implicated in the alleged wrongdoing until they call for Hogsett to resign. She criticized the mayor and other city leaders for allowing Cook to step down from his role in late 2020, more than two months after an HR recommendation to fire him and three years after Roberts first raised concerns. "Your constituents cannot afford for you to spend another moment wringing your hands or claiming that your role is limited to policymaking," Roberts read in her statement intended for councilors. "Your positions are not neutral."
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
Missouri prepares for sports betting rollout
JOPLIN, Mo. — Legal sports betting in Missouri is now just a few months away. If you want to place a bet on the big game, that's legal for half of the Four States. Sports betting is allowed in Kansas and Arkansas, and isn't far off for Missouri. 'For a number of years, people have tried to convince us that we are losing revenue to other states. It doesn't change the activity. People who live in Missouri still engage in the activity. It's just that we don't benefit in any way from it, and it was simply good for business,' said MO. Rep. Lane Roberts, R. The Show Me State switch is happening in 2025 with the 'Missouri Gaming Commission' taking applications for direct mobile licenses through next month. There are a couple more months to go for applicants for other retail and mobile licenses. 'I think we're pretty much on target – I believe the end of the year is what we'd like to accomplish,' said Roberts. Voters approved sports betting last fall, setting that timeline in motion. Much of the tax revenue from the change is earmarked for education. That comes from a state tax of ten percent, something that had been a longtime issues for state lawmakers. 'We normally try to attach that to something that benefits a certain area of our budget or a population,' said Roberts. The Gaming Commission expects to officially launch Missouri Sports betting on December 1. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Yahoo
Beloved by K-12 Leaders, The Four-Day School Week Fails to Deliver, Study Finds
In recent years, hundreds of school districts across the United States have responded to labor issues and straitened budgets by switching to a four-day weekly schedule. But new research from Missouri suggests that cutting out a day of instruction doesn't yield the benefits proponents hope to achieve. Circulated as a working paper on Monday, the study offers a statistical analysis of the effects of shifting to a shorter week alongside extensive reflections from educators themselves. Most of those teachers, principals, and superintendents spoke favorably about the change, saying they believed it had helped their schools attract and retain teachers in the midst of a tight job market. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter The numbers tell a different story, however: On average, the 178 Missouri districts that adopted a four-day week since 2010 did not improve at either recruiting new teachers or retaining their veterans. Andrew Camp, a scholar at Brown University's Annenberg Institute and one of the paper's authors, said district leaders' enthusiasm for four-day weeks was likely grounded in the sincere belief that they could be the answer to persistent staffing challenges. 'These things spread through word of mouth, they grab hold of people's imaginations, and we end up with this rapid adoption of four-day school weeks,' Camp said. 'But the fact that it was such a small effect — for a lot of these districts, it's one teacher being retained every three years — was really striking.' Related The almost negligible results, and officials' apparent misapprehension about their true magnitude, are particularly salient given both the scale of the four-day phenomenon and the speed with which it has been embraced. Mirroring national trends, the number of districts throughout Missouri operating on a shortened schedule has skyrocketed over the last decade and a half, accounting for one-third of the statewide total last year. Twelve percent of all students, and 13 percent of all teachers, now experience a four-day week (smaller figures proportionally, because they live almost exclusively in rural areas with smaller headcounts). The initial wave of transitions, beginning in the early 2010s, is usually attributed to states' need to contain education costs in the aftermath of the Great Recession. But in the study's 36 interviews with leaders of Missouri schools and districts, along with several teachers, respondents generally agreed the main effect of the scheduling change was to slow turnover and make schools more attractive places to work. This is something that's a potentially risky gamble, and there don't seem to be any benefits as far as teacher retention or recruitment. Andrew Camp, Brown University At least one superintendent credited the four-day week — which requires teachers to work longer days when school is in session, effectively holding instructional hours constant — with a surge in job applications and a sizable drop in workforce churn. Several others claimed that a longer weekend was a vital feature in drawing teachers to far-flung communities that cannot afford to offer top salaries. But after examining state administrative data between the 2008–09 and 2023–24 school years, including figures on teachers' school and district assignments, education levels, and experience, Camp and his co-authors found that four-day districts won only meager advantages. Switching to a truncated schedule resulted in just 0.6 job exits per 100 teachers, an effect that falls below the bar for statistical significance. Camp said the findings were broadly in line with those of prior work on the four-day schedule. While the transition might prove appealing, especially to new teachers, it likely would not address most employees' complaints about salary and working conditions. 'We don't rule out the possibility that there is a short-term, very small bump in teacher retention and recruitment,' he said. 'But what our results from Missouri show is that, over this lengthy period, there's no lasting effect.' It remains to be seen what effect, if any, the new paper will have on the ongoing debate around the often controversial policy. On one hand, it can only be said to be representative of one state's approach. Around the country, different legislatures and districts have permitted distinct versions of the four-day week. Unlike in Missouri, some states do not specify that overall instructional hours stay the same even in a shortened schedule, resulting in less instruction being delivered to students over the course of the school year. In Oregon, where more than 150 districts adopted a four-day week in the years leading up to the pandemic, one long-running study found that students missed out on 3–4 hours of teaching each week, even with the remaining days of instruction lengthened. Math and English scores fell in those classrooms (particularly among middle schoolers, whose sleep schedules could be disrupted by the earlier start times on days when classes were in session). Related A study published last summer echoed those results, revealing significant declines in standardized test scores in six states where large numbers of districts adopted a four-day week. Another paper, focusing on Oklahoma, found no detectable impact on student achievement — though it observed that school expenditures did fall slightly in four-day districts. It doesn't save a lot of money, it doesn't seem to do good things for students, and we don't have evidence showing that it improves student attendance. Emily Morton, NWEA Notably, the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released state data indicating that implementation of four-day weeks was associated with only minor drops in test performance during the 2019–20 school year, though they disappeared in later years. Negative findings do not appear to have dimmed the public's enthusiasm for the idea. In 2023, a poll from the education advocacy group EdChoice showed that 60 percent of parents supported the possibility of their children's school moving to a four-day schedule; just 27 percent of respondents were opposed. Emily Morton, a researcher at the assessment group NWEA who has conducted several studies of the effects of the four-day week, said the Missouri paper was yet more evidence that the policy, whatever its attractiveness to parents and schools, did not offer much measurable upside. 'Whether or not the four-day week is a good thing, it doesn't seem to meet this particular need,' Morton said. 'It doesn't save a lot of money, it doesn't seem to do good things for students, and we don't have evidence showing that it improves student attendance. My sense, after studying this for a few years, is that communities just really like it.' Still, with the continuing spread of shortened weeks, more and more states and districts will have to at least give careful thought to their possible impact. Jon Turner is a former district superintendent in Missouri and a professor at Missouri State University. While not an avowed advocate of the four-day schedule, he has traveled to multiple states to advise school districts considering making a switch. Lately his peregrinations have brought him to Indiana and Pennsylvania, where — as in most states east of the Mississippi River — the practice is still comparatively rare. No school district makes this decision lightly, and no one sees the four-day week as a solution. Jon Turner, Missouri State University Turner said that local K–12 leaders he had met with took the question seriously, often weighing the evidence of achievement losses against their falling student enrollments and challenges in hiring new staff. Many feel the lifestyle flexibility offered by the change is one of the few perks they can offer to teachers who can easily move across district or state lines for better pay. Particularly in regions where neighboring communities have already shifted from five- to four-day weeks, he added, holdout districts may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage. 'No school district makes this decision lightly, and no one sees the four-day week as a solution,' Turner said. 'It's a symptom of challenges that schools are facing.' Related The rapid spread of the trend has nevertheless met some resistance — including in Missouri, where the state legislature recently passed a law requiring larger communities to gain the consent of voters before implementing a shorter school week. In neighboring Arkansas, lawmakers are considering legislation that would establish a minimum school year of 178 days of in-person instruction. Camp said the results of his study offer forewarning to the education community. In light of the existing evidence around diminished instruction, he concluded, state and local authorities shouldn't make cavalier decisions with their instructional time. 'This is something that's a potentially risky gamble, and there don't seem to be any benefits as far as teacher retention or recruitment. So I do think this should make everyone very cautious about adopting the four-day school week.'
