Jasper Wildfire: Latest Updates on Evacuation Orders

Several wildfires raged in Jasper National Park on Monday evening, forcing all visitors to the park and the 4,700 residents of Jasper to flee westward, unnoticed, along mountain roads through darkness, soot and ash.

Photos and videos shared on social media showed a midnight procession of bumper-to-bumper cars and trucks, headlights on, red taillights blazing, cars slowing, stopping, starting and crawling through swirling wisps of acrid smoke.

“It’s wall-to-wall traffic,” Edmonton resident Carolyn Campbell said in a telephone interview from her car.

“It (the smoke) is quite thick. We have masks in the car.”

Campbell said it took hours to travel just seven kilometers. She said they had plenty of gas, but they were worried about others who fled with little in the tank.

Jasper town — and the park’s main east-west artery, Highway 16 — were caught in a fiery pincer. Fires raging from the northeast blocked highway access east to Edmonton.

Another fire that spread from the south forced the closure of the north-south Icefields Parkway.

That left one route open: west to BC

Park and city officials were busy trying to clear traffic congestion, find fuel for vehicles, get vulnerable people to safety while mobilizing resources to fight the fires.

“Everyone in Jasper must evacuate now,” the Alberta government said in an emergency warning just after 10 p.m.

“Parks Canada is responding to multiple emerging wildfires,” the federal agency said in its press release.

“This is a changing and dynamic situation.”

Map of Alberta’s wildfire status, pictured on July 23, 2024.

The evacuees were told they had five hours to leave, by 3 a.m. local time on Tuesday. They were also told to take important documents, pets, medicine and other emergency supplies.

Those without transportation had to go to the Jasper Activity Centre, the Forest Park Hotel or Maligne Lodge.

In British Columbia, the province was busy finding places to sleep.

“BC will do everything we can to provide safe shelter for Jasper evacuees, and we are working as quickly as possible to coordinate routes and arrange for host communities on our side of the border,” said Bowinn Ma, BC’s emergency management minister, in a post on the social media site X.

The village of Valemount, just across the border between British Columbia and Alberta, has opened a community center for evacuees, but overnight space is limited.

“We can give them some water and maybe some snacks,” village director Anne Yanciw said in an interview.

“For those who have been evacuated from their homes, we can provide vouchers for a place to sleep and vouchers for food.”

A graph from Environment and Climate Change Canada shows active weather warnings in Alberta on Tuesday, July 23, 2024.

Yanciw said there was no immediate need to send evacuees west to Prince George – a larger centre with more facilities to accommodate evacuees.

“They (the evacuees) are already tired. It’s the middle of the night and a three-hour drive to Prince George could easily mean accidents. We tell them that (Prince George) is their final destination, but not tonight,” Yanciw said.

Back in Alberta, it was advised against traveling west of Hinton, which is just east of the national park.

“Please avoid the Jasper National Park area along Highway 16 and allow emergency responders to do their work safely,” the RCMP said in a news release.

Parks Canada reported that evacuations have been issued at several campgrounds, as well as the Athabasca Hostel and the Palisades Stewardship and Education Centre.

Jasper National Park is the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies and features campgrounds and an extensive network of hiking trails.

The fires in Jasper were one of several in Alberta that have already displaced 7,500 people from remote communities.

The province has been simmering and sweating for days in scorching temperatures of over 30 degrees Celsius.

More than 160 wildfires raged across Alberta, sending plumes of smoke blanketing the sky.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 23, 2024.