Canada mourns as Jasper, jewel of the Rockies, burns – Much of town incinerated by 100 meter-high walls of flame driven by tropical storm-force winds – “There are no tools we have in our tool box to deal with it”
By Max Matza and Eloise Alanna
26 July 2024
MONTREAL (BBC News) – Tears welled in Tasha Porttin’s eyes as she reminisced on the sheer beauty of the place she’s called home for 10 years.
Jasper’s mountain peaks and the picture-perfect pine trees that frame its vivid baby-blue lakes make it a popular tourist destination attracting millions each year. The natural beauty and small businesses, like the pharmacy she started, make the quaint alpine town in Canada’s Alberta province a jewel of the nation.
It’s a “place that has the biggest heart of any community I’ve met”, she said through tears. “It grabs people and never lets go.”
Those memories have now been replaced by an evolving nightmare. An out-of-control blaze has levelled about 33% of the buildings in the Canadian Rockies resort town, and fire crews are still working to douse the flames that have already burned 89,000 acres (36,000 hectares).
Rain tamped down the fire on Thursday night, and no new blazes have started in the last day, officials said in an update on Friday. But winds were expected to pick up and hot, dry weather is forecast to return by Monday.
Out of a total of 1,113 structures in the town of Jasper, 358 have been destroyed, according to town officials, who added that it may be weeks before residents can return home.
But “all critical infrastructure in Jasper was successfully protected” – including schools, a hospital, and a water treatment plant.
Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland said his own home may have been destroyed by the fire. “Where the fire did the most damage, that’s where my home is”.
“How I will react remains to be seen.”
The mayor said despite preparation and years of training, the nature of the fire “humbled the humans on the ground”.
He added that “nature prevailed” with 100m (328 ft) high walls of flames that were metres wide.
Ms Porttin rushed to flee the area in a camping trailer that her husband bought less than a month ago. She has been monitoring the fire, waiting with concern as buildings nearby crumble.
“I have seen images of it standing,” she said of her business. “Unfortunately, the buildings next to it are not. That’s pretty much all I know.”
“It’s just surreal to think our downtown is not the way we left it.”
Canadians and elected officials have described a deep sense of grief and a devastating cultural loss as the area continues burning.
Sitting just north of the more popular Banff National Park, Jasper National Park is the largest in Canada’s Rocky Mountains.
The Unesco World Heritage Site is home to elk, grizzly bear, moose and bison.
The adjacent town of Jasper has a population of around 5,000, but has around a dozen hotels to accommodate the roughly 2.5 million people who pass through to visit the park.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the area a “special and cherished place” for many Canadians.
Karyn Decore, whose family has owned the historic Maligne Lodge over 60 years, has been receiving condolences from around the country since learning it was destroyed as the fire swept through town.
In an interview on Friday, she said she has always loved sharing the Canadian “icon” with international visitors, calling it “one of the most famous national parks in the world”.
“People understand the beauty, and the power, and the magic of Jasper National Park,” she says, recalling her lifetime of wildlife viewing, mountain biking, fishing and skiing in Jasper.
Ms Porttin said she loves watching visitors fall in love with Jasper. Most who end up moving to the town have a similar-sounding origin story.
“Most people say I came for a summer, and I stayed the rest of my life,” she says. “It grabs people and never lets go.”
Town residents, she says, enjoy meeting people from around the world as they come and “fall in love with the place that we love”.
Ms Porttin said she rushed to leave as the blaze closed in. She said the recently bought camping trailer was already stocked with some necessary supplies.
“Without that,” she said, “I don’t know what we would have done.”
Along with her four-year-old, she had only 30 minutes to pack on Monday.
Her husband was away, so a friend who owned a truck came over, and hooked up the trailer so they could all flee.
The two families spent two nights camped out together before her husband was able to join them.
“As much as you think you’re prepared, you’re never prepared to leave,” she said.
The destruction is expected to have a steep economic cost, as tourists stay away during the height of travel season.
Ms Decore says her now-destroyed hotel is normally 100% occupied from May to October every year. Now, all of the tourists and staff have evacuated the area, and they don’t know when they may return.
Park officials estimated that a power outage in the town last year, which lasted two weeks, deprived local businesses of some $10m in revenue.
It remains to be seen how long it will take to restore the resort, as well as the pristine ecology that helps make the majestic park a pride of Canada.
Meanwhile, there are currently 51 wildfires burning “out of control” around the Alberta province, forcing some 17,000 Albertans to flee.
Canadians mourn as Jasper, jewel of the Rockies, burns
Canadian wildfire with tropical storm force winds may have destroyed half of a popular town: “Burned to the ground”
By Li Cohen
26 July 2024
(CBS News) – Parts of a popular tourist destination in the Canadian Rockies have been “burned to the ground” after a wildfire with tropical storm force winds merged with another fire to burn 89,000 acres, officials said, adding that as much as half of the town may have been severely damaged.
The fires broke out in Alberta, Canada, where they overtook the municipality of Jasper, home to Jasper National Park, the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies and the second-largest dark sky preserve in the world. It started on Monday, when Parks Canada said it was responding to multiple fires. By the next day, Jasper and Jasper National Park had been evacuated, with officials focusing on two blazes – the North Wildfire and the South Wildfire.
“The storm was ferocious – the skies went dark and there were whipping winds, fierce rain and lightning,” BBC journalist Wendy Hurrell, who had been in the national park when the fires began, said. “…It will be a very long time before [Jasper] will recover. It’s utterly devastating for them all and my heart is breaking.”
“Consistently high and gusty” winds caused the fires to spread and grow from the confines of the park to the town itself. On Wednesday night, air quality “deteriorated to the point that wildland firefighters and others without self contained breathing apparatuses needed to evacuate” and the fires had merged, officials said.
“It [was] just a monster at that point,” Pierre Martel, director for Parks Canada’s national fire management program, told the BBC. “There are no tools we have in our tool box to deal with it.”
Thursday saw wind gusts as high as 62 miles per hour – strong enough to be considered a tropical storm had it been a cyclone – and the North and South fires had combined with the nearby Utopia Wildfire, which had almost been contained before the merge. At one point, flames were as high as 328 feet, an official said, according to BBC.
In its latest update, town officials wrote on Facebook that the Jasper Wildfire Complex has burned an estimated 89,000 acres of land, although accurate mapping “has been challenging” due to strong winds, extreme fire behavior, smoke and an inability for aircraft to fly safely.
Thick cloud cover also made satellite imaging difficult on Thursday. Both the town and the national park are under evacuation orders.
“This is the worst nightmare for any community,” Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said during a news conference on Thursday, adding that “potentially 30 to 50%” of buildings had been destroyed.
Canadian talk show host Ryan Jespersen said “there are no words” to describe the damage in Jasper. He posted a video of the damage, showing ashen skies and ground with dead trees and the charred remains of homes and cars. Many buildings in the video are shown to be almost completely gone, with nothing but a few steps remaining in front of nothing but air.
“Jasper is burned to the ground,” he said on social media.
The same day the fires broke out in Alberta on Monday, Earth had its hottest day ever measured – breaking a record set just hours before. The hotter the planet gets, partially driven by the use of fossil fuels, the more likely areas are to experience the conditions that fuel fires and cause them to rapidly spread – high heat, low humidity, strong winds and dry vegetation.
During Thursday’s press conference, Premier Smith fought back tears and struggled to speak, emotional over the “wall of flames” that had overtaken the town and park that are “a source of pride” for the province, “with some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.”
“Our grandparents visited to experience the majesty of this place, with its mountains and lakes and meadows. They took our parents, who then took us to this special spot that they’d spent time in as children,” she said. “And now we take our own kids and our own loved ones and visitors from around the world to feel that same feeling that you get with your first glimpse of the mountains on the horizon – a feeling that even though you’ve just left home, you’re coming home.”
On its website, Tourism Jasper asked for “patience and grace as many of our residents and businesses navigated this loss and turn to the future rebuilding of our community.”
“Maybe the right words will come eventually. Maybe once the dust settles, and the rain falls, and we have an accurate assessment of the damage, maybe then we’ll be able to fully express our sadness about Jasper’s recent tragedy,” the department said in an emotional note on its website. “…Our mountains have stood tall for millions of years, and Jasper will stand tall through this.”
