Firefighters working near the remains of a burned building in Jasper, Alta. on July 26.TYSON KOSCHIK/Getty Images
Five days after wildfires reached the town of Jasper and levelled roughly one-third of its structures, authorities on Monday said all remaining hotspots in the community have been extinguished and crews are bringing power back on and preparing for a staged re-entry.
But Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, said there are no timelines for when that will occur, and cautioned that active wildfires nearby continue to pose a threat.
“It’s going to take a bit of time, and especially in light of weather conditions in the coming days,” Mr. Guilbeault told reporters in a media briefing on Monday, referencing a stretch of hotter weather forecast to begin midweek. “We want to be very careful because the safety of the people of Jasper is our main concern right now.”
Several wildfires had threatened Jasper for days, forcing more than 20,000 people in the region from their homes before reaching the town last Wednesday. The fires then merged and reached approximately 320 square kilometres – the single largest fire in Jasper National Park’s history.
About 30 per cent of Jasper’s 1,113 structures were levelled. Authorities on Sunday escorted reporters on a tour of parts of the town, emphasizing that much is intact. The majority of damaged buildings are residential; the media tour did not include the most devastated residential neighbourhoods. No injuries have been reported.
Mr. Guilbeault said Monday that rail service has slowly resumed, but that Transport Canada reported that the rail backlog will take an estimated 15 to 20 days before operations are returned to prefire levels nationwide.
As of Monday afternoon, there were 124 wildfires burning across Alberta, of which 25 are out of control, 47 are being held and 52 are under control. Many areas of the province received significant amounts of rain in recent days, which has been crucial in battling the blazes, Alberta Wildfire information officer Melissa Story said at a separate briefing.
Authorities described the Jasper fire as a catastrophe that no human efforts could have prevented.
Ron Hallman, president and chief executive of Parks Canada, said the agency has worked with the town and Indigenous partners for years to reduce known wildfire risks. This has included conducting prescribed burns dating as far back as 1996 and subsequent planned ignitions to maintain the fire guard; a program to make homes more fire-resistant beginning in 2003; installing sprinkler systems in key areas; and conducting joint interagency simulation exercises for emergency scenarios.
As well, he said Parks Canada incident commanders and other experts on the ground are of the view that they had all the resources they needed to fight the fire, with all requests for assistance granted.
“The simple fact is that sometimes there are no tools or resources capable of overcoming a wildfire of the magnitude that we faced this week.”
Asked about the role that dead trees, ravaged by mountain pine beetles, played in fuelling the fire, Mr. Hallman said his agency has had 15 prescribed burns over the past decade, burning “thousands and thousands” of hectares in the park to mitigate their impact.
Landon Shepherd, an incident commander with Parks Canada, said the insects spread into Jasper National Park from about 2014 to about 2018, and that the agency harvested an area more than five square kilometres to remove them.
Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland described a stretch of land “kilometres wide and 30 kilometres long” that is full of trees devastated by mountain pine beetles and said “there is no conceivable way to remove all of them.” He said what unfolded over the past week was not a failure, but a successful effort by wildland firefighters and structural fire protectors that saved 70 per cent of the town.
“That does not diminish, in the least, the horrifying experience that those on the ground dealt with, that those residents who are going to return to a devastated community are going to feel. But I reject, entirely, any suggestion that there is a failure here. Everyone got out of town – every resident, every visitor got out safely – and most of our town was spared.”
Jen Beverly, an associate professor at the University of Alberta who has studied wildfires for more than 25 years, said the devastating blaze was caused by a combination of high winds, hot temperatures and dry conditions.
Prof. Beverly similarly said that mountain pine beetles aren’t responsible in fuelling the fire. Trees attacked by the invasive forest pests can be extremely flammable, she said. But, as the tree dies and its needles fall, that fire risk drops.
“When I look at the reports of the fire behaviour last week in Jasper, it looks like the conditions were weather driven,” she said. “I’ve seen fire spreading in Jasper on green, perfectly healthy large pine trees.”