Residents from Sucker River, one of several northern communities near La Ronge evacuated Monday, wait to be bussed to Regina. (Derek Cornet/larongeNOW)

By Derek Cornet

wild evacuations

UPDATE: La Ronge evacuation expanded to 20 km radius; airport breached

Jun 2, 2025 | 5:10 PM

UPDATE 6:15 p.m.: An evacuation order issued for the La Ronge area has been revised to include all areas within a 20 km radius of the Town of La Ronge. An alert issued shortly after 6 p.m. said the wildfire has breached the airport.

La Ronge, Air Ronge, Lac La Ronge Indian Band, Napatak, Eagle Point, Lamp Lake, Rabbit Creek, Potato Lake, Sucker River, Nemeiben, English Bay, and Wadin Bay must evacuate immediately.

Individuals requiring transportation are permitted one small bag of personal belongings. There are no pets allowed on the buses or in shelters.

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La Ronge Mayor Joe Hordyski is encouraging residents of the tri-communities to try and remain calm as they evacuate from their homes due to the nearby Pisew wildfire, burning about 16 kilometres away from the town.

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Around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, an evacuation alert was issued for La Ronge, Air Ronge and the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, the total population of which is about 7,500.

The fast moving fire, which had already forced Hall Lake residents to flee more than week ago, also led to the evacuation of Clam Crossing, English Bay, Nemeiben, Sikachu, Sucker River and Wadin Bay earlier in the day. Stanley Mission remains on standby.

Hordyski said a pre-evacuation alert was issued earlier in the day after briefings from the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency (SPSA) about the Pisew Fire near La Ronge and the Ditch02 fire near Weyakwin.

“Basically, so people can start thinking about things that they should be prepared [for],” Hordyski said.

A long line of vehicles could be seen at local gas stations in La Ronge Monday afternoon, as residents prepared to leave. (Derek Cornet/larongeNOW)

Anyone requiring transportation was told to go to the Jonas Roberts Memorial Community Centre. Individuals that can self-evacuate and find their own accomodations must use Highway 2 and register online or in person at the Days Inn in Prince Albert. If access on Highway 2 south of La Ronge is affected by wildfire, SPSA operations vice-president Steve Roberts said residents would be guided to Highway 165 to head west.

“There’s a little bit of fire adjacent to the highway at Hall Lake and we would manage that if we needed to use that as our primary corridor for an evacuation,” he remarked.

An image of the wildfires burning near the highway between Weyakwin and La Ronge. (Shavonne Custer/Facebook)

It is anticipated that evacuated residents from the La Ronge area will be sent to several locations such as Hudson Bay, North Battleford, Prince Albert and Weyburn.

“Basically, we are canvassing every community in Saskatchewan for their capacity, and as evacuees come out, they will be directed to areas where they can be housed until they can return home,” Roberts added.

La Ronge paramedic Nina Nahachewsky said the community of La Ronge isn’t a stranger to wildfires, but the threat of it still has some residents concerned.

“There’s definitely a lot of people who are freaked out,” Nahachewsky said. “The gas station lines are pretty long … for getting fuel, getting food and water. Then there’s also people who were here for the 2015 fire who are very calm, very reassuring.The big thing right now is just trying to stay calm, and some people are already leaving town, which will help with the bottleneck of everybody else evacuating.”

Nahachewsky said that emergency services started earlier with hospital evacuations to help those who are at a higher risk out of the community ahead of time.

“Patients who aren’t able to walk, that are just at a higher risk due to the smoke conditions.”

Nahachewsky is staying in the community to continue to help out those who are going to need it as the fires burn on.

“I’m actually not too concerned about my physical safety because I know that there’s so many protocols in place,” she said. “So that there’s not any loss of life, and that’s honestly the biggest thing, a house can be rebuilt, but keeping the people safe is what’s important.”

Residents from the Hall Lake area are concerned about the worsening wildfire situation. (Sandra Halkett-Ratt/Facebook)

Dayna Sanderson and her father were among those who evacuated from Wadin Bay on Monday. She didn’t realize the Pisew fire had gotten so close until she was notified to leave their cabin this morning.

She said on Saturday crews began setting up sprinklers and testing equipment in Wadin Bay.

“They started pulling out all of the hoses, the fire emergency hoses, because once we had the fire … in 2015, they got hoses and everything prepared for the next forest fires,” Sanderson said. “So now they have all of the sprinklers set up on the cabins by the time we were leaving, because I think we were one of the last ones left because they came to our cabin and asked how long we were going to be.”

According to the SPSA, the Pesiw fire has crossed Hwy 165. Highway 910 northbound near highway 165 is closed. Junction highway 913 to Junction highway 165 is closed. The Ditch02 fire, near Weyakwin has caused intermittent closures of Highway 2.

As of Monday, there were 18 fires burning in the province, six of them are not contained.

– with files from paNOW and CJME

derek.cornet@pattisonmedia.com