Canada's western state of British Columbia declared a state of emergency on Friday, as the country sees the worst wildfire season in its history. Wildfires in British Columbia intensified on Saturday, forcing authorities to evacuate twice as many people as the day before.

One of the more significant fires is active around Kelowna, a city about 300 kilometres east of Vancouver, closing a section of a major highway connecting the Pacific coast with the rest of the country.

"The TransCanada highway was closed near Chase, around 400 km northeast of Vancouver, and between Hope, 150 km east of Vancouver, and the village of Lytton," reports Reuters. "The highway is the main east-west artery used by thousands of motorists and truckers heading to Vancouver, the country's busiest port."

An additional impact on cargo transport is a rail outage near Vancouver, reported in an HMM advisory dated 18 August.

"An outage on the Thompson Subdivision occurred early this morning between North Bend and Keefers due to the BC interior forest fires. This corridor includes a directional running zone where CPKC and CN share rail infrastructure to maximize capacity for both railroads," writes the rail operator.

"CPKC teams are on site and currently assessing the situation. Customers who route traffic in this lane can expect delays at this time."

Additionally, highways 2 and 5 in other regions in Canada are closed, according to an update from Crisis24.

Firefighters are battling 1037 active fires across the country, according to yesterday's update from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC), with more than half active in British Columbia. Of these 1037 active fires, 653 are considered out of control.

In Canada, wildfires are common in forested and grassland regions from May to September each year. Back in 2021, Canada recorded 6,525 wildfires destroying around 43,000 square km. This year the devastation is three times more widespread, while the number of fires recorded YTD is 5806.

"About 140,000 square km (54,054 square miles) of land, roughly the size of New York state, have already burned, and government officials project the fire season could stretch into autumn due to widespread drought-like conditions in Canada," reports news agency Reuters.