Aug 17 (Reuters) - Canadian fire crews on Thursday battled to prevent wildfires from reaching the northern city of Yellowknife, where all 20,000 residents are leaving by car and plane after an evacuation order was declared.
In Yellowknife, hundreds of people lined up outside a local high school waiting to be taken to the airport for one of the five evacuation flights planned on Thursday to the neighboring province of Alberta.
Defence Minister Bill Blair, speaking to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC) after the meeting, said the federal government was closely monitoring the evacuations and was prepared to quickly airlift residents if land routes get cut off.
Shane Thompson, the territorial environment minister, said the evacuation order had been issued late Wednesday to give people time to get out before the weather turned bad.
Diamond producer De Beers said in a statement that its Gahcho Kue mine, some 280 km (170 miles) northeast of Yellowknife, continued to operate although a number of employees from surrounding communities had been evacuated.
In May 2016, a huge fire destroyed 10% of structures in the northern energy-producing Alberta city of Fort McMurray, forcing the evacuation of 90,000 residents and shutting in more than a million barrels per day of oil output.