Parks Canada is working to gather accurate information so it can create a map of wildfire damage outside of Jasper, Alta., the agency said in an update Sunday afternoon.
The Municipality of Jasper released a map and list of addresses Saturday, showing which town structures sustained openly visible damage from an immense wildfire — described as a monster, with flames reaching 100 metres high when it hit late Wednesday. About one-third of all the town’s structures are estimated to have been destroyed.
That fire, which has since merged with another that had threatened the town, is one of several out-of-control fires that make up the Jasper Wildfire Complex. They have burned about 32,000 hectares combined in the national park, Parks Canada said in an online update Sunday, and the agency is trying to map out damage in other areas.
The fire is one of 141 total wildfires burning in Alberta as of 2:15 p.m. MT Sunday, according to the Alberta Wildfire dashboard. Officials said the Jasper fire is still the highest priority, however.
Parks Canada, the lead agency on the fire response, estimates that fire crews may be working on the Jasper fire — the largest the national park has experienced in a century — for three months at least, Landon Shepherd, a Parks Canada deputy incident commander, told reporters Saturday.
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Much of the province received rainfall this weekend, which has significantly helped firefighting, including in the national park, said Melissa Story, Alberta Wildfire provincial wildfire information officer, during a virtual news conference Sunday afternoon.
“This was a good weekend for firefighting,” Story said, noting, however, that conditions are forecasted to change in the coming week.
An estimated 17,100 Albertans have been evacuated due to wildfires as of Sunday, said Joe Zatylny, deputy managing director of the Alberta Emergency Management Agency, during Sunday’s provincial update.
About 25,000 people were evacuated from Jasper National Park earlier this week due to wildfire, but officials have previously said many of them were visitors. The nearly 5,000 residents of Jasper were all evacuated.
Officials estimated that 358 of the 1,113 total structures in Jasper, Alta., were destroyed. Some government and emergency officials, as well as a few members of the media, were allowed to tour Jasper on Friday, witnessing the damage in person for the first time.
Parks Canada is bussing media members into Jasper again Sunday afternoon for another guided tour of the community.
In an online update, Parks Canada said fire suppression has been progressing well in the Jasper townsite, and it anticipated all remaining fires there would be extinguished on Saturday.
Structural protection sprinklers are being relocated, from previously burned areas to the active fire perimeter adjacent to the community and outlying structures — to protect these areas, Parks Canada said. This includes more structural protection sprinklers being installed at Lake Edith and businesses north of the town of Jasper.
Fire crews have deemed Jasper safe enough for CBC to get a first hand look at the damage caused by wildfire.
Bulldozers are preparing to put protection lines around the north end of the community and to help reduce spread west of the community on the lower slopes of Whistler Mountain.
Support from Ontario, Quebec, Australia and South Africa is expected to arrive on Sunday.
Atco Ltd., the power and natural gas utility for much of Alberta, made “significant progress” toward assessing its infrastructure in the Jasper area this weekend, the company said in a thread of posts on X, formerly Twitter.
Its crews were able to restore electricity to Jasper’s wastewater treatment plant and most hotels where first responders are staying, the posts said. But “significant repairs” need to be made on its electrical system to restore power to other critical infrastructure.
Jasper Bylaw has been retrieving pets from evacuees’ homes and delivering them to the Hinton & District SPCA. Workers and volunteers are working hard to care for the incoming variety of pets.
Atco, the Muncipality of Jasper and Parks Canada are working on a two-phase plan to “underground” much of the distribution feed to the town, which will restore power to key facilities and improve reliability.
Crews inspected about half of its gas system so far, according to the posts. But the company did not specify any damage to those lines.
The federal agency said power is being restored to parts of the downtown core and critical infrastructure, which it said would help to speed up further damage assessment and recovery.
Earlier Saturday, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith told her provincewide radio call-in show that she’d like to see bus tours organized for evacuated residents of Jasper so they can see the damage the wildfire did to their town for themselves, and so they’ll know what to expect when they’re eventually allowed to return home.
The premier told listeners she expected it would be close to 28 days before Jasper residents would be allowed to return to their town, explaining it took a similar amount of time before Fort McMurray, Alta., residents got the green light to go home after it was hit by a ferocious fire in 2016.
While Smith said after her tour of the town on Friday that critical infrastructure remained intact, including schools, the hospital and water treatment services, she said on Saturday that staff needed to get inside the hospital to check for damage since there were reports its roof had been on fire.
Because the town is part of Jasper National Park, rebuilding plans are taking shape with help from the federal government, Smith said.
“We’ve already begun a joint task force on how recovery is going to take place, trying to time when people are able to return to their community, and I’m very hopeful it will come back better than ever,” the premier said.
Smith also said she’d like temporary housing arranged for residents so they can live in the town while they rebuild their homes, noting that temporary housing was also used during the reconstruction of High River, Alta., after it suffered devastating floods in 2013.
“So we have seen a precedent where you set up a temporary community that allows people to live on-site while rebuilding is occurring,” Smith told her radio audience, noting that nearby Hinton may be relied on for construction workers.