Active wildfires near Hay River right now from the national fire map — nearest first, with each fire's stage of control and size, and the official channels that matter in an evacuation.
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Active wildfires near Hay River right now, from the national fire map — nearest first, with each fire's stage of control and size. It reads the same feed the fire agencies publish, so it is only ever as fresh as they are. This page is not an alert system: evacuation orders come from NWT Alert and the Town, not from here.
SS019-26 — 21 kilometres west of town (right around Hay River), under control. 8 more fires in range.
As of July 29 at 3:32 PM.
| Fire | Where | Stage of control | Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| SS019-26 | 21 kilometres west | Under control | 2,478 hectares |
| SS046-26 | 103 kilometres east | Out of control | 44 hectares |
| SS009-26 | 109 kilometres southwest | Under control | 200 hectares |
| SS008-26 | 111 kilometres southwest | Out of control | 2,000 hectares |
| 2026WB15 | 112 kilometres southeast | Out of control | under a hectare |
| SS040-26 | 112 kilometres southwest | Out of control | 100 hectares |
| SS001-26 | 115 kilometres northwest | Being held | 5 hectares |
| 2026WB14 | 125 kilometres southeast | Out of control | 2,405 hectares |
| 2026WB17 | 130 kilometres southeast | Out of control | 14,855 hectares |
“Being held” means the fire is not expected to grow past its current size in the conditions of the day; “under control” means it is not expected to spread at all. Both can still be smoking and worked on for weeks. A fire’s size and stage lag the ground, especially in its first hours.
This page is not an alert system
In August 2023 wildfires forced the whole of Hay River and the Kátł'odeeche First Nation to evacuate south down Highway 1, the second major evacuation in as many years after the 2022 flood. Fires came close to town and the highway itself was threatened. That is the memory this page is built for: knowing early which fires are near, how big, and whether they are holding — so the official evacuation call, when it comes, is not the first you have heard of it.
Hay River's link south is Highway 2 down to the Mackenzie Highway, then Highway 1 to Enterprise and on toward Alberta; a fire across that corridor can close the one road out even before it threatens town, so a fire that looks far on the map can still matter for getting away. This page tracks the fires themselves. Two companions answer the other two questions: “Is the Road Out Open?” reads the territory's own highway service for those stretches, and “Wildfire Smoke & Air” reads whether the air is safe to breathe today.
Fires tagged “NT” are the Northwest Territories' own (the South Slave zone around Hay River is “SS”); “PC” fires are in Wood Buffalo National Park just to the south, run by Parks Canada; “AB” fires are across the Alberta line toward High Level, on the road down. All of them can send smoke or threaten the southern highway, which is why the map reaches past the territory's edge.
Checked July 29 at 3:32 PM. Data: Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) / Natural Resources Canada, licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. The map aggregates the provinces’ and territories’ fire agencies; new starts can take time to appear, so a quiet map is not a guarantee that nothing is burning.