With hundreds of homes including that of a mayor and fire chief scorched, officials assert that the handling of the Jasper Wildfire Complex was the best possible outcome in the face of an unstoppable force of nature.
It’s been one week since the north and south fires in Jasper National Park put the small municipality in the mountains under evacuation as they burned their way toward the town. An estimated 25,000 people fled the town, leaving it all vacant, with the exception of the firefighters working to keep it safe. On Wednesday night the worst fears of the fire crews were realized when the blaze breached the town, but officials have cited the community’s many years of fire preparations as the main reason more damage wasn’t done.
FireSmarting the community
In the aftermath of the Jasper Wildfire Complex’s contact with the town, the term FireSmart has come up often as the key difference between the damage that was done and what could have been.
FireSmart has been part of Jasper’s approach to wildfire safety since 2003, but according to CEO and President of Parks Canada, Ron Hallman, the park had been deploying a variety of strategies to mitigate wildfire risk.
“Parks Canada has regularly performed prescribed fires and mechanical removal of hazardous trees and underbrush in the park. We manage, for many years, including in Jasper National Park, with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding invested in this initiative from successive governments for multiple decades,” said Hallman in a virtual press conference on Monday.
All of Jasper’s work prior to official FireSmarting programming and since its rollout in 2003, resulted in the Town of Jasper as being “one of the first FireSmart communities in Canada,” according to Hallman.
Not just preparing the land, the initiative also led the community to have sprinkler systems installed in key areas to preserve critical infrastructure, and “joint interagency simulation exercises with the Town of Jasper for a variety of emergency scenarios for at least the past seven years.”
All of this culminated in what Hallman said was a town that was perhaps the best prepared of any to face the fires that occurred last week. He said for the fire to have still breached the town is indicative not of a failure, lack of resources, or any other inadequacy, but a reminder of the power of nature.
“Simple fact is that sometimes there are no tools or resources capable of overcoming a wildfire of the magnitude that we faced (last) week and as the mayor (Ireland) said so eloquently the other day, we stand humbled in the presence of nature.”
Bracing for impact
With 70 per cent of the town unscathed, Landon Shepherd, the Deputy Incident Commander with Jasper National Park for Wildland Fire who was on the scene during the critical fighting on Wednesday night, echoed similar sentiments to Hallman.
As Shepherd described the unfolding events from last week, just 30 per cent of infrastructure burned begins to sound like a victory.
As the fire approached the Town of Jasper, emergency responders could see the flames coming by Tuesday evening. On Wednesday night, when the town stood vacant, a thick layer of smoke had spread throughout, and fire chief and director of emergency management for the Municipality of Jasper, Mathew Conte, reported that ash and embers started raining down on the town from the sky.
“At that point, workers mobilized patrols. They were starting to work on hotspots,” said Conte.
“We were running around everywhere over town trying to put out these spot fires.”
Shepherd said that the feeling on the ground as crews moved throughout the town to sure up sprinkler lines was as if they were “bracing for impact.”
The fire inbound was estimated by Hallman to be 300 meters, spewing burning pine cones and other debris up to a kilometre ahead of the blaze.
Impact
At one point, the Jasper Wildfire Complex consisted of four separate wildfires, which was a nightmare scenario for Shepherd.
“A bad day was going to be one big, fast-moving fire. Not four fast-moving fires. Like in a sense, it’s helpful that three of them chose to join up because then you’re only dealing with one,” said Shepherd.
The fire was fed by another natural force that proved to be just as destructive in its own right.
“The winds when they came through town, some of our estimations are in excess of 100 kilometres an hour. So, if the ember shower wasn’t intimidating enough for people, having what felt like hurricane-force winds coming through town and ripping giant trees that have stood for 150 years through all kinds of storms and events — having them snapped off four meters up in the air.”
From the lightning that started the fire, to the heat wave that primed the trees, to the wind that fanned the flames, Conte, Shepherd, and the rest of the firefighters on the ground were hit with a mix of some of the worst-case scenarios.
Aftermath
Steven Guilbeault, who is the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change and also responsible for Parks Canada, said in the Monday press conference that the fire was the “single biggest in Jasper National Park History.”
“The problem was not for lack of coordination or resources. But because they were facing a raging inferno that defied conventional firefighting tools,” said Guilbeault.
He explained that many of the Parks Canada workers who were responding to the fire were located on the southwest side of Jasper, meaning they had to continue fighting the blaze as their homes burned.
Such was the case for Conte, whose own home — even as the fire chief of the Town of Jasper — was caught in the blaze. He warned residents that there’s not much they can do to prepare mentally for what that feels like.
“I don’t know if there is a way you can really prepare for it to be honest with you. You think you can…It’s very overwhelming and it’s just not something you could prepare yourself for until you see it,” said Conte.
The Jasper Wildfire Complex as of 1 p.m. Monday was still burning out of control and is estimated to be more than 30,000 hectares in size. Alberta Wildfire said there are 124 wildfires burning in the forest protection area, 25 of which are out of control while 47 are being held and 52 are under control. More than 17,000 Albertans have had to evacuate due to wildfires.