Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada said on Sunday that four members of the country’s military had been killed in a “violent, fast-moving” fire at an army base southeast of Edmonton, and dozens of others were seriously injured.
The fire erupted just after 4 p.m. local time on Saturday at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright, one of the country’s busiest army bases.
“What followed was one of the worst tragedies for the forces on Canadian soil in peacetime,” Mr. Carney told reporters in Ottawa on Sunday afternoon.
He did not say how many people were hospitalized because of the fire, nor what had caused the blaze.
The flames appeared to be fanned by strong winds and “crossed the base fence” before crews were able to tame the spread around 11 p.m., about seven hours after the first calls about it, local authorities said.
Mr. Carney has asked senior officials to provide a detailed account later on Sunday of how the incident unfolded, and did not take any questions following his remarks.
“Canadians come together in crisis,” Mr. Carney said. “That is the best of our country.”
The Canadian flag will be lowered to half-staff on federal buildings to honor the victims, he said, and thanked medics and ambulance crews for pouring in to help from across Alberta.
C.F.B. Wainwright hosts at least two large-scale training exercises for live-fire training every October, according to the Canadian Army.
The base is in a rural area just south of the town of Wainwright, which has a population of about 6,000 and employs around 300 civilian workers.
The Department of National Defense said on Sunday that it was in the process of notifying the families of those who were injured or killed.
One of the people critically injured in the fire is the son of a mayoral candidate, Cathy Keane, who is running in Oro-Medonte, a town in southern Ontario. Ms. Keane, in a statement posted to her social media, said she would suspend her campaigning activities to travel west to Alberta. “As a mother, right now I need to be with my son and family,” Ms. Keane said in the statement.
The fire comes just before a vote on Monday in which the oil-rich Western province will ask its citizens whether they want to remain part of Canada or hold a second, binding referendum on seceding. An early-voting station in Wainwright stayed open longer than scheduled on Saturday because of the fire, according to Elections Alberta.
