Fires extinguished in Jasper, remain active in surrounding areas

July 29, 2024, Jasper, Alta. — Steven Guilbeault, federal minister of environment and climate change, said in a statement to the media the fires within Jasper have now been extinguished but the wildfire is still active around the town.

There is, however, an expectation for increased fire activity beginning on August 1, with weather forecasts currently indicating incoming warmer and drier conditions, he said.

There is currently no timeline for return of Jasper residents. Guilbeault confirmed in the briefing that 30 per cent of the town’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed.

Ron Hallman, president and CEO of Parks Canada, said the agency and its partners did everything they reasonably could to prevent the destruction.

“The simple fact is that sometimes there are no tools or resources capable of overcoming a wildfire of the magnitude we faced this week,” Hallman said in the briefing, calling the conditions that firefighters are battling unimaginable and hellish.

His message was mirrored by Jasper mayor Richard Ireland, one of the city’s residents who lost their home.

“For anyone who might see this as a failure, I reject that premise,” Ireland said in a video statement to the media. “This is a success. If you make the analogy to a battle, we anticipated, with Parks Canada, that something like this could happen, and so we fortified our community.”

Firefighters and the Canadian Armed Forces said in a July 28 statement on X (formerly Twitter) they are making progress in fighting the wildfire complex.

Reduced fire behaviour allowed 350 firefighters from Parks Canada and Alberta Wildfire to fight fires near values at risk, the statement from Parks Canada said.

Meanwhile, Ontario firefighters joined to attack the north line on the Palisades bluffs and members of the Canadian Armed Forces worked to fight fires near the northwest side of the town.

An updated fire perimeter map, created after an initial aerial survey of the perimeter on July 26, determined the fire size to be approximately 32,000 hectares with no significant changes since the survey’s completion.

Preventative projects, including the construction of a 12-inch volume sprinkler line across the community fire guard, are nearing completion, providing contingency control features to the community, Parks Canada said.