Wildfire continues to threaten communities of the Buffalo River Dene Nation
CBC
A wildfire that continues to burn in Saskatchewan's northwest has destroyed at least eight cabins on the ancestral lands of the Buffalo River Dene Nation.
Rose and Dan Matzner, owned their cabin at Dillon Lake, about 550 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon, for 25 years.
It burned to the ground last Saturday.
"I felt like crying because you go there, you have so much in that place," Dan Matzner said in an interview from the couple's home in Meadow Lake on Friday night.
"It's a place where we did gathering of berries, medicine, got some trapping around there, hunting ... We took our grandkids out there, so that's all lost."
The same wildfire that reduced the cabin to ashes is still threatening Dillon, the main community of the Buffalo River Dene Nation.
The blaze, just southeast of Dillon, covered about 9,690 hectares on Saturday morning. It's grown by more than 2,000 hectares since Friday, according to the latest update from Saskatchewan's Public Safety Agency.
The wildfire prompted the evacuation of nearly 150 people from the Buffalo River Dene Nation earlier this week.
Those with chronic illnesses as well as the very young and the very old were transported to Llyodminster on Wednesday and are expected to stay there over the weekend.
Indigenous Services Canada and Meadow Lake Tribal Council assisted in the evacuation.
Approximately 600 people remain in the area near the fire. They are prepared to evacuate if necessary, according to Buffalo River Dene Nation Chief Norma Catarat.
There's a lot of smoke, which threatens access to the community's main road.
Catarat has two buses on standby in the community of Buffalo, located an hour away, in case more people need to be evacuated.
"It's going to be 35 C starting Sunday, that's a major concern too because once the heat is there, the potential for the fire to pick up is very high," she said.