The Red Cross is helping to evacuate more than 3,700 residents from three northeastern Manitoba First Nation communities being threatened by a late-summer wildfire.

“In the last couple years, this is probably the largest evacuation in one area due to fires," Shawn Feely, the Canadian Red Cross’ vice president for Manitoba and Nunavut, told CTV Winnipeg on Wednesday.

Less than one kilometre away, the fire is closest to the Wasagamack First Nation, which has approximately 2,000 residents. The First Nations’ leadership, in consultation with the federal government, ordered their entire populations to leave on Tuesday afternoon due to “heavy smoke and fire,” according to a press release from the Red Cross.

A spokesperson for the Red Cross, which is assisting with the evacuations, told CTV Winnipeg that evacuees are travelling by boat to St. Theresa Point, where they are being housed in a school and airport terminal before flying out, as there is no airstrip at the Wasagamack First Nation.

“It is sad to see,” Chief David McDougall of the St. Theresa Point First Nation told reporters. “But at the same time, everybody was in good spirits.”

Another 850 people from St. Theresa Point First Nation and around 850 more from Garden Hill First Nation will also be moved out of concern for the smoke’s impact on their health.

“People with health concerns, and the people needed to support them, are the only people being evacuated at this time from Garden Hill and St. Theresa Point,” a Red Cross statement said.

The evacuees are primarily being transported to Winnipeg and Brandon, Man., with the Red Cross hoping to evacuate 1,200 people by the end of the day Wednesday. The displaced people will be housed in hotels for now, but that may be dependent on hotel room availability, the Red Cross said. The Red Cross is also working on a plan for a large group shelter that can house 2,000 evacuees, likely in Winnipeg.

“There’s no one city in Manitoba that has enough hotel rooms for… the evacuees,” Feely said. “That’s why we are using multiple sites.”

There is no word yet on how long the process could take or if more people will be affected.

The three First Nation communities are located within Manitoba’s Island Lake area, approximately 600 kilometres north of Winnipeg. The 3,700 evacuees join 900 residents of the nearby Poplar River First Nation who were transported from their fire-threatened community weeks ago and are currently staying in Winnipeg hotels. The province says there is still no timeline for when it will be safe for them to return home.

“It was heartbreaking that we had to leave our community due to the fire,” Poplar River First Nation evacuee Deborah Bittern told CTV Winnipeg. “A lot of land is burnt and hunting grounds are burnt, you know. And we live off the land.”

Fighting the fires, which flared up quickly, has been incredibly difficult, officials say, with heavy smoke hampering water bombers flying to put them out. Those water bombers, officials added, are currently on standby and ready to fly as soon as conditions allow it.

“The north part of that fire, farthest from the community, is actually growing,” Gary Friesen, the province’s fire program manager, told reporters on Wednesday.

Manitoba Sustainable Development hopes that rain on Friday will ease the situation, but it expects dry conditions to persist into next week.

With files from CTV Winnipeg