Front Burner - Canadian treasure Jasper hit by wall of fire

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Jasper is a historic resort town in western Alberta's Rocky Mountains, surrounded by towering peaks and vibrant turquoise lakes. But this week, heartbreaking images are emerging from the town and the surrounding national park: buildings turned into charred rubble; trees scorched to the point that they look like matchsticks.Alberta Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis described a "wall of fire" that bore down on the town on Wednesday night, estimated to be up to 100 metres high, with firefighters powerless to stop it.CBC Edmonton reporter Travis McEwan spoke to host Jayme Poisson about how the fire got so destructive, the challenges of fighting it, and what's next for residents there.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey everybody, Jamie here. So before we get started, we had planned to air the second part of our series about Israel and America's special relationship today. But obviously, we had to change plans given the catastrophic fires tearing through Alberta. We're going to run part two on Monday. And if you didn't catch yesterday's show, please do go back and check out part one

after you get through today's show. All right, let's get started. Jasper is this historic town in western Alberta. It's about a four-hour drive from Edmonton. It's surrounded by these towering mountains, crystal clear lakes, and all kinds of wildlife. I visited it once, a really long time ago, on a drive across the country, and I thought that it was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. But this week, we're seeing heartbreaking images emerge from there. A wildfire has now breached the town of Jasper, causing widespread damage. Multiple buildings have engulfed by flames, including the historic Malin Lodge. The loss is said to be significant. I've been going to Jasper since I was born, and I can't even

recognize the buildings. That's how, it looks like a bomb, major bombs went off. It's horrifying. Alberta once again finds itself in a difficult and dangerous situation due to wildfires. Alberta currently has over 170 active wildfires burning throughout the province, with more than 50 of these classified as out of control. The fire was whipped into a firestorm because of these big, intense winds. Crews who were fighting it reported seeing 300 to 400 foot flames. Alberta Premier Daniel Smith said on Thursday that as much as 30 to 50 percent of the town's infrastructure may have been damaged. No injuries or deaths have been reported as of Thursday evening.

My colleague Travis McEwen, who's a video journalist with CBC Edmonton, has been covering the fire. He's here to walk us through how it got to this point, what it's been like for residents there, and the challenges of fighting a fire like this. And I just want to note that we talked around 4.30 mountain time, 6.30 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday evening. on Thursday evening. Travis, hi. Thanks so much for making the time tonight.

No problem. Thanks for having me, Jamie. I've been lucky, as I mentioned, enough to visit Jasper myself. But for people who haven't been there, tell me a bit about the park and the significance that it holds for people in Alberta and really beyond Alberta. Yeah, it's actually a tough one for me to sum up in a way

because I love this park as well. I've spent a lot of time out here. It's one that a lot of Edmontonians use. I've been talking with a bunch of friends and colleagues recently. It's kind of like a backyard, right? Where you want to get away away for the weekend a long one or just a couple days you want to do a random solo camping trip you head out here uh in the winter you want to go to the ski hill marmot based and there's a spot to go and in the summer it's beautiful i've went out solo camping um to the miette area before on my own it's awesome there's uh sulfur skyline is a beautiful hike it even goes to the Miette area before on my own. It's awesome. There's a sulfur skyline is a beautiful hike. It even goes to the back country. If you want to go that far, it's one of those places, one of those national parks where you're going down the highway and you haven't even reached

the Jasper town site and people are stopping because there's just big horn sheep that run the road, you know, and, and people are constantly pulling over because the wildlife's amazing. And people are constantly pulling over because the wildlife is amazing. You might see a bear somewhere and pristine water. I was actually just out at Canada Day weekend. Me and my partner Ashley ended up spending Canada Day weekend south of Jasper along that Icefields Parkway. And that's where the fire ended up starting. And we went to a campground that was amazing right across. You've got Valley of the Five Lakes.

And we're talking five lakes where they're just like different colors. They're that blue and green and you're hiking to every one and you're just astounded. Yeah, it is like such a special place. Everything you're saying is resonating with me so much, except I will say the solo camping stuff. I don't have the guts to do that. But that sentiment that you're saying is resonating with me so much except i will say the solo camping stuff i don't have the guts to do that but that sentiment that you're getting at there like that was something that we saw from the premier daniel smith today at her press conference she got quite

emotional uh about the beauty and and how special it has been for generations of albertans it's not something that we see often from her for For many generations, the town of Jasper and the parks surrounding it have been a source of pride. With some of the most beautiful scenery in the world, our grandparents visited to experience the majesty of this place. They took our parents who then took us to this special spot. And so although those of us who experienced Jasper as visitors can't imagine what it feels like to be a Jasperite right now, we share this sense of loss with all of those who live in the town, who care for it, and who have helped build

it. Travis, I wonder if you could take me back a couple of days. How did this fire start? Like, start at the beginning for me. For sure. And I'll say too, I related in that way to the Danielle Smith's emotion there. There's been an emotional coverage for me too and we actually were here on um we end up coming on monday night i mean when we saw i saw the message on my phone saying that you know five hours before this fire was going to hit jasper i took it seriously i got a missed call i was on my bike from my boss and and you know as soon as i seen it i was like oh yeah i'm gonna go like and they're like all right we'll go in the morning and I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to go. And they're like, all right, we'll go in the morning. And I was like, I don't know, five hours. We started talking like this is a big national park and we should probably head out as soon as possible. And we decided around midnight to hit their ground running because people were told five hours and everyone was taking it seriously.

Now that was corrected later on where it was, they wanted everybody out of the park within five hours. But I mean, it led to bumper to bumper traffic because you had multiple fires. You had the one from the South that was pushing people out and to the North because that's the Icefields Parkway, just a beautiful area that they couldn't go down. That's the one that goes down to Lake Louise. And then they were told they couldn't go east because there was a smaller fire near Snaring Campground that was too dangerous

over there, they thought. So everyone was pushed to Valemont. And there was people that eventually just decided, I've talked with some people who decided to actually stick around because they were like, we're not getting anywhere in this traffic. And they stuck around and some of them lucked out because they ended up getting escorted east towards Hinton, which is where I'm at now. Right. When things got really hairy, they ended up getting escorted. Yes.

It must have been really stressful for people having to kind of weigh that and make these decisions. I actually spoke to a couple who had a crazy story. They got split up in that moment. They packed all their stuff up already because they're planning to move soon. She's in the campground, which is near the one fire, gave her cell phone to her husband. Meanwhile, he's in the town with the kids as they're basically clearing out their house and locking up. And all of a sudden this evacuation happens and they don't know if they're going to meet up. And they luckily both end up getting escorted to the east in Hinton

and they reunited in the Walmart parking lot in the RV here. Wow. I'm glad to hear that. The fire hit the town on Wednesday night, right? And so just tell me what we know about what happened then. Yeah, let's go back a little bit earlier in that day. We were told that South Fire, it was 12K the day prior, and now it was about eight kilometers from the town. So that means from about 11 a.m. till about six o'clock at night, that fire moved eight kilometers within an afternoon, which is crazy because-

That's fast, right? So fast. Yeah, it's so fast. I was astounded that it was, I thought we had some time for sure. And the thing was, I mean, I was actually back at the hotel here taking a quick break. I thought I was off for the day. But when I figured things picked up, I jumped back into gear and figured we were going back to work because the skies were orange here around five, six o'clock. Some of my colleagues were saying they were at the gates of Jasper National Park. And essentially, all those essential workers and emergency workers were leaving like in big convoys. And we soon found out later from Parks Canada that they were told it was too dangerous and they should leave.

And it was just going to be firefighters sticking around. And that was around six o'clock. The skies were orange. All of a sudden we started going down to that entrance. Pitch black. Wow. It's pitch black at I think it was 6.55 and it looked like the dead of night. And all you could see was kind of the glow of the mountains. And then all of a sudden there's like ash falling on you. Our vehicles

were covered after being down there for a couple hours, probably around night. We knew things were dire. And then at about nine o'clock, we saw a convoy of RCMP vehicles all leaving. Tell me more about that. Like, what do we know about, you know, why are the RCMP vehicles were leaving? enforcement. And also, they were telling us earlier that they were essentially getting the last evacuees, keeping an eye on them and making sure that they actually left eventually when it got too dangerous. And they were telling people that they had to go and waited till they left. And I know some people have seen RCMP leaving kind of rubs them the wrong way, but Parks Canada and the municipality said it was too dangerous and that they just need a fire crews to stay there and and all we were seeing was fire trucks heading in at that point and and

tell me more about what we know the fire crews were met with like what do we know about what they were battling oh like the descriptions of that fire are crazy that it was just like this wall of fire, you know, that was, you know, hundreds of feet. Fire crews were witnessing three to four hundred foot flames, fully involved, continuous crown fire and a fire spread rate of approximately 15 meters per minute. So the town, the fire came into town very quickly. I think people need to picture what those wildfire folks were experiencing at that time. And there is really, any firefighter will tell you, there's little to nothing you can do when you have a wall of flames coming out like that. So kudos to those folks that were the heroes i i don't know how crazy that is and that there was bits of ash and things falling off of that fire that were creating

spot fires in the town so it wasn't like the fire was just going over and roasting everything it was bits that were flying off those ambers that were starting to catch under the structures and that's when you know it turns into a wildfire fight to a structural fire fight, which is essentially those firefighters in towns and cities, right? In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

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My understanding is that some of the firefighters had to leave, right? Because it's like a different thing to fight the structural fires as opposed to the wild firefighters. And explain that to me, that at least some of them had to retreat because of that yeah you know some of them did for sure and and that's a different fire that they're fighting there's that fire outside of the town that's where the parks canada and alberta wildfire fighters they've got all kinds of tactics and that's the other thing i'll point out too. The tactics they were trying to use were not working yesterday. Like we're talking, you know, when you see water bombers, the aerial attacks, things like that, dropping water, the flames are so high and dangerous that none of

this stuff was working. And I don't know if you ever heard of like, they use like an ignition where they'll essentially try and lead the fire to another spot. And that's like roads and highways to breaks. And none of that stuff was working last night. And so then the structural firefighters, that's where they take over because we saw fire crews from Hinton, Grand Cache coming through. And they're the ones with the fire trucks that are trying to put all these fires out in the homes and the buildings. You're trying to put all these fires out in the homes and the buildings. I heard Premier Daniel Smith say that 30 to 50 percent of the structures in the town may have been damaged. And what else do we know about that right now?

Yeah, that's where things get. It's a little blurry right now because the premier is saying that. But at the same time, we talked to Parks Canada and Parks Canada said publicly that right now they're not committing to saying how much of the wildfire has burned Jasper at this point. They're not saying specifically what has burned. the premier has spoken publicly about because they're focusing on trying to contain the fire in the Jasper town site and fighting and putting out the flames. So that's their focus. And I know I think they also don't want to give anybody false hope, but at the same time, people are having to rely on videos and pictures coming out of that town site right now as their only means of getting some confirmation right now. I was listening to one guy on CBC talk about how he basically was watching like some video of what really did look like his home burning. It's so awful to go through this. I can't imagine.

Tell me a little bit more about what is being done right now to fight the fire. I know that the military is being called in. And just tell me what's happening right now. Yeah, I mean, the structural portion, there's basically volunteer crews coming from all over Alberta right now. It's pretty amazing to see Edmonton Ascending Fire trucks out here. I saw one from Strathmore, I think. So any crews in the province are basically coming out. I've seen even people trying to get trucks. People are posting online if they can get volunteers out to help out haul water, things like that.

And then, yeah, there's a lot of the military work as well. And Alberta wildfires having a lot, bringing a lot more people out as well to actually handle the wildfire portion. And here's a crazy thing we haven't brought up yet. It's been said today that it could be two weeks before that fire is under control. Wow. What kind of damage could it do? Well, I think the big thing, if it's not under control, which way does it go? And you also have this other fire. This is a lot smaller. There's one to the northeast, that snaring one. I got a close-up of that one actually on Tuesday.

And we were supposed to go on a tour and go into the Jasper site. and it got too intense and really stoked up in the afternoon on Tuesday that RCMP called the tour and said, we can't go any further, it's not safe. So who knows if that's going to link up with that one and which direction it goes as well. And from my experience covering wildfire, the direction really depends on the wind and the fuel, right? So it's very unpredictable and they've been referring to

this fire as very aggressive and very dynamic. And so that's kind of the danger of the fire because you've also got Hinton to the east here and to the west, you've got Valemont in British Columbia. It's not that far and you've got Mount Robson around that way as well. Travis, what about people who might be in and around the park, maybe like hiking or camping. Like I did see some TikToks of, they were like trying to hike out of back country amid all of this. I boarded this river and then I walked another kilometer and then I saw that, which is exactly the direction that I am supposed to be going right now. So I, for the first time in my life had to

click the SOS button on my Garmin which thankfully I had it's a massive fire it's only getting bigger so it's clearly coming towards me if we can get a helicopter over here yeah I'm not sure anyways that's my update are there worries that that that there are people who who beyond the towns that there are people that also might be caught up in this that's the thing that's that's the thing that's made this one so complex in a different way because i've covered other wildfires but this one has backcountry areas where people want to be you know away from everybody in an area where you might not be found. That's the whole point of it, right? That's the whole point of backcountry.

It's quiet. It's just you and nature. And, you know, like I was saying, there's that Sulphur Skyline backcountry hike. Now the bonus of these hikes in the Jasper National Park is that you have to register to get to them and get sites. So, you know, Parks Canada was saying they had an idea of how many people should be out there but the thing was once the smoke started in the fire and some of these places don't have cell reception so they might have not gotten the emergency alerts or been too far like a couple day hikes right so uh they were sending in helicopters essentially to get to either trail heads or to actually go into these designated camping sites or you know you can to get to either trailheads or to actually go into these

designated camping sites that are, you know, you can't get to by road at where they're at. Right. They hiked in. And so they were picking those people up. And it's said now that they feel those big priority backcountry trails are cleared at this point, which is great. That's good to hear. One thing I wanted to ask you about is that I've seen people point out that the Alberta government has made some pretty large cuts to its wildfire budget in recent years, starting in 2019 under Jason Kenney, the former premier. And there are suggestions that that might be hampering the ability to fight this. And do we know if there's

any validity to that at this point? Well, we do. Yeah, we do know back then that it was the rapid attack firefighter program. They're the ones that are basically the rappel from helicopters and they dose wildfires. They're kind of these little small ones that cover a bit of hectares. So they try to get to those. They'll extinguish them before they kind of merge and meet up with other ones. And it's a very mobile crew, but it's a small crew. It was supposed to be about 63 firefighters around the province. And the government did cancel that in 2019 and saved about $1.4 million. I think that part really exemplifies how for many people, and you're going to see that you'll see this on social media, there's the political side of firefighting and whether governments are, how they're reacting to climate change and wildfires being related to that. And I'm seeing a lot of that on social media right now, for sure.

Travis, just before we go, I'm curious to get your take on this. As somebody who covers a lot of these, you know, we have, of course, seen these fires significantly damage or even completely destroy a number of Canadian communities in the last couple of years. Fort McMurray, Lytton, Kelowna, now Jasper. Right now, there are hundreds of ongoing fires in BC and a number of communities there that are actually also under evacuation order. How have you seen the nature of these fires change just even in that time, just even in that short time span? Yeah, you know what's crazy about that list, the U-List? I covered Fort McMurray the night it burned. I went covered after the town burned. I went and did a lot of stories there. Back in 2011, after the town burned. I went and did a lot of stories there. Back in 2011, I covered the fire in Slave Lake as well, where about a third of the town burned. This is my third time covering

essentially a wildfire burning in a town or a small city. And I've even covered First Nations last summer, a couple of First Nations as well that have burned. And I've been covering stories and working in media for over 20, about 20 years now. And I've really noticed over the past, say, 12 years, essentially since Slave Lake, that this is just part of reporting now, especially out here in Alberta. This is a big part of it now, right? Like that. And I've also how fast these fires have moved and how dangerous is something I've really noticed over the years, big time and how, you know, Fort McMurray was, I remember I think in the afternoon, they were like, yeah, no, no problem. Everything's going smoothly. And all of a sudden one afternoon, the wind changed, the fire got aggressive, and people literally had to evacuate as bit more, we had a little bit more time, but still, um, it's, it's striking just how fast it, it moved. Um, Travis, thank you for this. Stay safe, man.

Uh, we really appreciate you taking the time. No, you're welcome. Thanks for having me. And, uh, yeah, it's a stressful time right now, but I think these conversations and especially in long form are worth having right now because these are scenarios people keep having to deal with. So thanks, Jamie. Okay, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. For the latest on the Jasper wildfire, including where to go if you've had to evacuate, you can always find the most up-to-date information on our website. The best place to look would be cbc.ca slash Edmonton. You can also tune into CBC Radio 1 either live or on the airwaves at your local frequency at cbc.ca slash listen or on the CBC Listen app.

cbc.ca slash listen or on the CBC Listen app. Front Burner was produced this week by Joytha Sengupta, Matt Muse, Ali Janes, Rafferty Baker, and Zoe Pearson. Sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron and Marco Luciano. Music is by Joseph Shabison. Our executive producer this week is Elaine Chao, and I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening.