‘We never left because the customers kept coming and we slept here in the parking lot,’ said Shell gas station cashier Vedanth Kartaj
The Shell gas station in the town of Jasper began getting busy in the late evening hours of Monday. Then, it turned into a full-on rush.
Vehicles lined up to reach the pumps. The street was clogged with traffic.
People filled up their vehicles for the trip west into British Columbia as the community was under an evacuation order due to a wildfire south of town, said station manager Clifford Selvaraj.
By early Tuesday morning, however, the traffic jam had dissipated. The roads of the iconic mountain community — normally bustling with out-of-town visitors on summer days — were largely empty.
“It was crazy busy yesterday during the time of the evacuation,” Selvaraj, who lives in Jasper, said Tuesday from the station.
“It was a bit chaotic . . . We sold all of the jerry cans we had.”
The service station and store remained open all night long.
In a story that has become all too familiar in Alberta in recent years, raging wildfires have forced residents to pack up and leave a community, including Slave Lake in 2011, Fort McMurray in 2016, and in Fox Creek and other centres just last summer.
In turn, residents — and business operators — responded quickly.
With fires burning in Jasper National Park on Monday, officials with the municipality and Jasper National Park issued a wildfire alert and evacuation order around 10 p.m.
“Everyone was told to evacuate and it was a two-and-a-half hour wait to go two blocks, that’s how big the gridlock was,” said Pattie Pavlov, executive director of the Jasper Park Chamber of Commerce.
“Once we hit the highway, it was marginally better, but it looked like a cobra — just a red cobra of tail lights running through the mountain.”
At the Shell station, Selvaraj and several staff worked through the night, taking turns sleeping in their car for a brief respite before going back to the store as people continued to stop by to load up on fuel, food and water.
“There was a huge (traffic) block, and it was like ash all around, there was smoke everywhere, foggy, but it cleared out after it rained,” said station cashier Vedanth Kartaj, who worked from 8 p.m. until 3:30 a.m.
“We never left because the customers kept coming and we slept here in the parking lot.”
Kartaj finally went home in the early hours of Tuesday. He was back on the job at noon for another shift.
The huge lineups of people had cleared up by the morning, leaving the streets largely deserted, in contrast to the scene the night before.
“It is like a Zombie-land to be honest — nobody is in the town,” Selvaraj added.
“Everyone has evacuated.”
For provincial business owners and operators, the evacuation order left them scrambling to get families, staff — and for hotel operators, their guests — safely out of the community.
And they did, by the thousands.
Stuart Back, chief operating officer for Banff Jasper Collection by Pursuit, which owns seven hotels along with restaurants and attractions in the Jasper region, said the company had about 600 employees and 2,000 guests in the area who left throughout the evening and into Tuesday.
Pursuit used six motorcoaches in Jasper to shuttle people out of the community, including Jasper residents and visitors.
It also brought some motor coaches in from the Columbia Icefield and Banff — having to access Jasper through B.C. in a 10-hour route — to assist.
“It was a big number of people and it did happen very quickly,” Back said. “Obviously, from the number of guests who are in Jasper and how many guests are impacted, it is definitely the peak for us.”
The company’s Forest Park Hotel in Jasper is housing first responders in the park who are tackling the fires, with a small number of volunteers from Pursuit helping to support their accommodations and meals.
With scorching temperatures expected to continue throughout the week, the fire situation is evolving hour-by-hour and remains unpredictable.
“There still is a major fire risk, not only (in) Jasper, but in multiple other areas in northern Alberta, including around many oilsands sites,” Premier Danielle Smith told reporters on Tuesday.
“It really is still all hands on deck until we can get those fires doused.”
Provincial officials said Tuesday morning that an estimated 17,500 Alberta residents have been evacuated across Alberta.
That number doesn’t include the thousands of visitors to the province.
Some of them could be housed at a reception centre in Calgary.
For Jasper and its permanent residents of about 5,000 people — it also sees up to 12,000 seasonal workers annually — the fire and evacuation has hit during the busiest period of the year.
However, residents and visitors safely fled town — and locals are looking forward to the time when they can return home.
“Everyone is all in with helping to save the town,” added Pavlov.
Chris Varcoe is a Calgary Herald columnist.