<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">Firefighters on Wednesday faced a grueling uphill battle against wildfires in Canada's Nova Scotia province, including one threatening suburbs of Halifax.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Federal help was coming, officials said, along with firefighters from the United States.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We're in a crisis in the province and we want and we need and we will take all the support we can get," Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston told a news conference. "These fires are unprecedented."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Already, additional kit have been shipped in from Ontario, and a dozen water bombers from neighboring regions and the Coast Guard joined efforts to douse the flames and assist with evacuations.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Houston said he has also asked for the military to help out.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the wildfires "heartbreaking," and vowed unlimited support.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As of Wednesday, 14 wildfires were burning in Nova Scotia, including three out of control. They've so far destroyed or damaged more than 200 homes and other structures including a wooden bridge, but no injuries have been reported.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One couple described to public broadcaster CBC having lost both their home and their childcare business. "That's my life," a tearful Terri Kottwitz said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Others said they saw trees on fire in their backyard as they fled with just a moment's notice.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Evacuee Janis Churchill-Moher told CBC that she didn't know if her home in the picturesque rural south of the province was still standing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Our neighbors have working farms and they just had to pack up their kids, pack up as many animals as fast as they could and run," she said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">More than 2,000 residents of the area were ordered to evacuate earlier in the week as fires swept through the area.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It's a devastating situation for everybody," she said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; "><b>- 'Frustrated and frightened' -</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Smoke from the wildfires blew down the Atlantic coast, prompting air quality alerts for the US state of New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania, including the Philadelphia area.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">David Meldrum of the Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency, pointing to record-high temperatures forecast this week, warned of "a prolonged operation" to bring under control a large fire northwest of the port city that has displaced more than 16,000 residents.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"People are understandably tired, frustrated and frightened," said Halifax Mayor Mike Savage, adding that "some have no home to return to."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Houston announced a ban on all activities in Nova Scotia forests, including hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, the use of off-road vehicles and logging.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"For God's sake, stop burning. Stop flicking cigarette butts out of the car window. Just stop it. Our resources are stretched incredibly thin right now fighting existing fires," he pleaded after several illegal burns were reported by conservation officers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Government data shows a decline in the number of wildfires in Canada since the 1980s, likely due to improved fire prevention.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But the past decade also saw more disastrous wildfires scorching a lot more land and displacing many more people -- problems set to worsen with climate change.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In recent years western Canada has been hit repeatedly by extreme weather, including floods and mudslides, forest fires that destroyed an entire town, and record-high summer temperatures that killed more than 500 people in 2021.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On Tuesday, 800 residents of Fort Chiepwyan in northern Alberta had to be airlifted to safety as fires beared down on the remote hamlet.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Earlier this month, wildfires in Alberta burned nearly one million hectares of forests and grasslands, and at one point displaced 30,000 people. AFP</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>