It’s over a week since a fierce wildfire swept through the Canadian town, melting cars to the road and destroying homes. On Sunday (August 04, 2024), the first of the municipality of Jasper’s displaced residents headed home to tour the townsite. Priority access was given to those whose homes were lost or damaged in the wildfire.
In a report from the Edmonton Journal, Joe Zatylny, deputy managing director for the Alberta Emergency Management Agency, said the first tour buses would depart Sunday from Edmonton and Hinton, but highlighted that access would depend on how the wildfire situation in Jasper National Park continues to fluctuate.
“We know returning to the community for the first time can be very difficult for residents, so mental health and support referral services will be available on the tour to help people prepare for seeing the disaster site as well as on the buses and afterwards to ensure people know where they can turn to for help again,” Zatylny said.
The report cited officials who expect more wildfire activity in the coming days as firefighters continue to battle blazes razing the Jasper area. During a press conference on Saturday, Parks Canada officials highlighted seeing some wildfire activity pick up “very quickly” on Friday afternoon.
Dean MacDonald, deputy incident commander for Parks Canada, noted that while the fire size has decreased from 39,000 hectares to 32,000, the number is constantly fluctuating.
“Today, we expect the same fire behaviour or more again, hot and dry,” MacDonald said. “Not a surprise, but we’ve got the right resources, lots of structure protection in place to ensure that we have a safe day today as well for folks to also understand, we also have night vision helicopters able to give us our night suppression capacity.”
Mathew Conte, fire chief for the Municipality of Jasper, said crews are on the ground in Jasper, ensuring critical infrastructure and services are back up and running. Utility crews have completed flushing on the north end of town, and the system is back up and running to all homes and businesses to the north end of the firebreak.
Crews are continuing to isolate damaged areas to the waterline on the south end of town, while water sampling has been sent to the province for testing with results expected on Tuesday.
“Our facilities team is working to ensure that all municipal structures and all our critical infrastructure (are) up and running,” Conte said. “So far, we have no reported damage to any of those buildings.
“We do have occupational hygienists coming in next week to prepare those buildings and make sure that they’re clean and air quality is consistent and acceptable to re-enter those buildings.”
Conte added that crews are expected to finish the cleanup of damage to hazardous tree material on Saturday.
Meanwhile, the report indicated that a reception centre is set to open in Hinton later next week.
Last week, the Canadian Press reported the angry denials of Parks Canada officials and politicians that forest management policies in Jasper National Park contributed to the catastrophic wildfire that damaged one-third of the townsite.
Ron Hallman, CEO of the federal agency, said the claim that the organization places a higher value on nature than people was "ridiculous".
"That is offensive, frankly," he said. "There is nothing that is more important to Parks Canada than the safety of our employees, our guests and the people that we work with."
