Four buses were being sent into the community of Sandy Bay to transport residents fleeing the choking smoke, said Cathy Bulych, a spokeswoman for the province's emergency social services.

"The bus capacity will be 160. We're working with health officials to determine exactly how many will come out," she said.

About half of the community's approximately 900 residents remain, she added.

About 2,000 people from the communities of Deschambault Lake, Black Lake, Stony Rapids, Uranium City, Pelican Narrows and Sandy Bay have already fled their homes.

Most of the 900 people living in Deschambault Lake were forced out Wednesday as flames licked at the fringes of the community and blanketed the area with smoke.

Fire crews set up sprinklers and burned off some of the ground fuels to rob the forest fire near the community of its momentum, said fire management official Scott Wasylenchuk.

"From all reports, it went very well," said Wasylenchuk, who added the flames were being attacked by ground crews and air tankers.

Two large generators were being shipped to Deschambault Lake because of power outages.

None of the communities was directly threatened by the flames.

The fire burning near Pelican Narrows, at just under nine square kilometres, was the largest and most threatening blaze, said Wasylenchuk.

"It ... is very hard to contain and control because it's so big. It's going to be a very difficult fire for us to fully contain."

Conditions could get worse, however, as the approximately 500 front-line fire personnel prepared for a storm system to blow through the northern areas, potentially spawning high, erratic winds and lightning.

"We're expecting it to be a fairly trying day for us, depending on how these storms come through," Wasylenchuk said.

Six new fires were sparked over a 24-hour period for a total of 65 fires burning in the province. Four of them were listed as out of control.

While long-distance telephone service was out for the remaining residents of Black Lake and Stony Rapids, emergency personnel were communicating with provincial officials via email and satellite phone.

With evacuees hunkering down at university campuses and even soccer facilities in Saskatoon, Regina and Prince Albert, health officials have been looking everywhere and dipping into out-of-province reserves to find enough sheets, towels and cots for everyone, said Garnet Matchett of the emergency health management unit.

"We have six, 200-bed hospitals in the province and we use a lot of those supplies for events like this. We'll take the beds and the blankets and the pillows and towels and sheets out of those supplies ... and deploy them to support emergency social services evacuations," he said.

He said his agency has been forced to bring in 300 extra beds from a depot in Winnipeg, and can also tap into extra supplies at a similar depot in Edmonton, if necessary.

Volunteers and government officials were turning their attention to how to entertain hundreds of children and their parents who were sleeping on cots in emergency evacuation facilities.

"If they would prefer certain types of activities - do they love to go swimming - then we would make arrangements to go to a pool or perhaps a science centre or a park, play outdoor soccer," Bulych said.

"We try to work with the (representatives) from the different communities and come up with activities that are suitable for that community."

Shuttle buses organized by the Prince Albert Grand Council were taking parents and kids to shopping malls, pools and movies, said Richard Kent, a spokesman for the organization.

"We're trying to make the evacuees stay as comfortable as possible, keeping in mind of course that it's not a holiday," he said.

"They may be out of their communities for a while. We don't know when they're going to be heading back."

- By Lisa Arrowsmith in Edmonton