One of the year’s first major wildfires in Canada closed in Monday on the British Columbia town of Fort Nelson, as thousands of people across the nation were forced to flee advancing blazes.

The Pacific coast province’s emergency management minister, Bowinn Ma, said 4,700 people were ordered evacuated from the remote town as well as a nearby Indigenous community, as a fire spanning 5,280 hectares advanced to within 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) of Fort Nelson.

Authorities have been bracing for another possibly devastating wildfire season, after Canada’s worst ever last year that saw flames burning from
coast to coast and charring more than 15 million hectares (37 million acres) of land.

Dozens of zombie fires sustained by layers of dried peat continued to smoulder beneath the surface of the boreal forest through the winter, which
was warmer than usual and left a smaller snowpack, while drought has persisted across the region.