The Current - The fight over rebuilding Jasper after devastating wildfires

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Hundreds of families who lost their homes in Jasper’s wildfires are still waiting for temporary housing six months later, while various levels of government fight about how and where to rebuild. What needs to change in how we respond to increasingly frequent and devastating wildfires?

They called it a school, but what kind of school has a graveyard? He says, you know what, I can't wait to get out of this hellhole. And that was the last time we heard from him. The kind of school that was meant to kill the Indian in the child. I have never seen such abject fear as what I saw in that child. And I have never seen such abject evil as what was in that man. I'm Duncan McHugh and this is Cuber Island. Available now on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. It has been six months since a massive wildfire tore through Jasper, Alberta and destroyed a third of that town. More than 600 family homes were lost, including the home of Sabrina Charleboix. Sabrina is a born and raised Jasperite who lived most of her life in her childhood home,

a home her late father built. I was actually in Edmonton at the time of the evacuation, so I wasn't home to get anything. So my friend got my dad's ashes and my cat and I lost everything else. Sabrina stayed with family outside of Jasper for a few months after the wildfire. For the past 11 weeks, she's been back in town living in a hotel. It's been pretty challenging, definitely a lot of unknowns and a lot of stress and anxiety because everyone in the hotels has a spring deadline that they have to be out of the hotels by. None of the hotels in

Jasper can support having local residents stay here over the summer. In the fall, the government Alberta pledged to build 250 temporary homes for displaced Jasper residents by early this year but the government has since backed off that promise leaving Sabrina and many others in housing limbo. Jasper had a housing crisis before the fire. We needed 600 more units before the fire. So you can see how that has made us be in a major crisis now, where there's absolutely nowhere to live. Our community deserves better.

Jasper deserves better. We've all been traumatized and lost so much and to continue to be traumatized by lies from our government is unacceptable. Sabrina is one of the organizers of a rally that's planned for this afternoon for Jasper rights without homes. This rally is meant to have their voices heard,

heard by people presumably like the Mayor of Jasper, Richard Ireland, who joins me now. Mayor Ireland, good morning. Good morning, Matt. You've lived your whole life in Jasper and you also lost your home. How are you doing six months in? Well, it changes day to day. I am doing well enough and I feel for people like Sabrina and so many others who are all facing this challenge together and yet they have found the strength to remain committed and resilient. And as you just said, thanks to residents

like Sabrina, they are showing that they remain unified and that I think will be demonstrated this afternoon. Unified, but very angry. People are living in hotels. People are not able to find temporary housing in the best of times. The, the vacancy rate in Jasper was zero, right? I mean, there was no real available housing.

And so what are you hearing from people about the toll that it's taking on them waiting for temporary housing in their town? Well, again, Sabrina is an excellent choice to reflect that. They are feeling stress and a degree of frustration and all of that, of course, is exacerbated by the uncertainty of the situation.

So they have remained steadfast. They have relied on statements that have been made. They have looked forward to housing that has not yet materialized and it certainly is the challenge for us to continue to get all parties to the table to assure that these residents and our local businesses have a chance to recover and housing is the foundation of all of that. So the focus certainly is as it must be on interim housing. So if the housing is the foundation of that, what is the delay? Help me understand this.

What is the delay six months in, in getting people into even temporary housing? Well, the delay is getting those houses on the ground. delay six months in, in getting people into even temporary housing? Well, the delay is getting those houses on the ground. And so, um, in good faith, the municipality, um, worked with Parks Canada, um, we serviced eight or pardon me, we, we serviced, um, four parcels of land that were made available in the community and understand that this is all federal land and that comes as no surprise to anyone.

But we made arrangements with parks to make land available. We service that land in anticipation of housing that would be procured by the province with an indication that 80 to a hundred of those units would be on the ground in Jasper in January. We are now at January 24th and no houses have materialized and the province is taking a position that it is the conditions of the release of the

land that are, are frustrating them. The premier of Alberta, Daniel Smith, smoke spoke on a private radio call-in show. Um, had this to say, have a listen to what the premier said. We are trying to do everything we can to get people in their homes and we're getting caught up on regulatory processes from parks, Canada.

Doesn't want to cut down a tree. Doesn't want to extend the boundary of Jasper so that we can put up temporary housing. I just want you to know, like we try to work collaboratively with our federal counterparts, but at this moment, Parks Canada is a real problem. So she blames Parks Canada. The MLA Jason Nixon, who's minister of social services, blames the municipality and the federal government for

turning down the province's plan. He says that the municipality of Jasper doesn't want our offer of help. There's a lot of finger pointing that's going on while people are trying to figure out where they're going to live. What is going on here? Well, firstly, I can assure you that trees have been cut down within the town site. Those four parcels encompassing over four hectares, so larger than four Canadian football fields have been cleared. Um, the work has been done.

It's not an issue of not cutting down trees and not an issue of squirrels or anything like that. The issue is about the kind of housing that people want built, right? That, that there is a dispute between whether this would be single family homes or homes that have a greater density. Well, it's not the style of housing at all, Matt. It is the density. And so we are perfectly

happy to accept single detached homes as the province of Alberta has indicated they can supply. It's just that we need more of them on the very limited land space that we have. We recognize that families need housing. Individuals like Sabrina also need housing. But we need more of that housing on a very finite parcel of land. And so the unit type, single detached family units, are perfectly fine with us.

We will accept as many of those as the province can deliver. We just have to face the reality that we have a limited land base and so we need to pack them in more tightly. In the meantime, the government has offered a hundred and some million dollars but now says that money is not going to come because you can't, there can't be an agreement that can be reached on in terms of what that housing looks like. Well, I am not prepared to accept that the housing

and the money can't yet flow. We have heard the word that. The government seems to believe that. Yes, but they have said that there is an impasse, but I can tell you that, you know, our residents and our council, perhaps just because we live in the mountains and we face challenges all the time, we understand that challenges are things that you find a way to overcome. And it's the role of leaders to find a path through when things are difficult.

And so it is a challenge indeed, but it need not be an impasse. And again, I think we need three parties at the table with a singular focus on providing housing for our residents and not be distracted by other conditions. I appreciate that the province has indicated that there are conditions on the funding and the delivery of these houses that go to long-term use and recovery of their investment, but we have to make allowance for the fact that some of those conditions perhaps can't be realized and as three orders of government come together to meet the immediate needs of the residents of Jasper.

Sabrina says that she feels like the government lied to her and also says that people who are living in hotels are going to need to be out by spring because that's you're getting close to peak tourism season in those hotels can't have people who are living there temporarily given that tourism season looming. Where are people going to live? Well, of course that is the challenge and right now there is not an alternative and that is why this crisis continues to escalate day by day. Um, we know that that end date is coming. We understand that all recovery and that is the

social recovery and the economic recovery rely on housing. Our tourism industry needs to recover. Those hotel rooms will be needed for the purpose for which they were intended. So where are people going to live then? Well, right now that is a challenge and everyone is struggling with it.

There are not alternatives. Certainly there are not alternatives in our community. Every available space is used now and there will be fewer available spaces if we don't get some housing on the ground in the very short term. I will say, as you are probably aware, Parks Canada and the federal government have indicated that they are in the process of procuring other housing, which they can put on some of those sites that we have serviced. So that will provide some relief

and we will continue to work with whoever will work with us to find other avenues to put housing on those service sites that are available. It's gonna be a pretty hot rally this afternoon, I would imagine, given what you've said. It could be. And again, that is a grassroots response from residents who are under such stress and anxiety and need answers and solutions and they need them in the very short term.

This is a gem in this country and I think people in the community, obviously, are pulling for everyone there, but people across the country should be as well. I'm glad to talk to you about this. This is an important issue and one that we will keep our eye on. In the meantime, Richard Ireland, thank you very much. Well, thank you, Matt. And I appreciate your interest. Richard Ireland is the mayor of Jasper, Alberta.

We did get a statement from Parks Canada, which says it is open to making as much land available as possible, but changing the town boundary will not result in providing places for people to live now. I'm Sarah Trelevin and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody.

Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's baby.

It's a long story, settle in. Available now. Jasper's still struggling to get hundreds of families back into homes, as you heard. Wildfire in the meantime is still sweeping through the mountains, north of Los Angeles. The Hughes fire grew to more than 4,000 hectares, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate a region still reeling from the most destructive fire in history, in its history. John Valiant is the award-winning author of Fire Weather, The Making of a Beast.

It's a book about the devastating wildfire that tore through Fort McMurray in 2016. He's in Vancouver. John, good morning to you. John Valiant Good morning, Matt. Matt You are the person that I wanted to talk to as we've been watching what's happening in Los Angeles, but also thinking about Jasper, thinking about Lytton, thinking about Fort Mac and the impact of these fires. What do you make of what you just heard, what's going on in Jasper? There are hundreds of families that are still displaced

and they have different levels of government that are fighting with each other about what the plan to rebuild will look like. Well, Matt, I'm thinking about the people in Lytton, BC who have waited for years now for the same kind of action. And I think its utility for the general public I think its utility for the general public is that it shows the impacts that climate breakdown has on larger communities. It's not just a fire, it's not just a flood, it's not just a drought, but it's this cascade

of effects that impact infrastructure and people for, in many cases, years afterward. You know, there's still ripples flowing through Fort McMurray from the fire, and they have very rapid rebuild and extraordinary insurance payout. So it's, you know, I agree with a lot of what the mayor said in terms of the need for a really unified response. Jasper is an international tourist center and we would need a full court press on a unified action in terms of rebuilding it as rapidly as possible.

So it is kind of baffling. I'm far away in DC to see the lack of action, but Lytton too, it's been years now since the rebuild has happened. And there's also the real question that this raises, and LA is gonna have to face it too, do you build back the same way? Do you just rebuild? That was the question that I was going to ask.

When you have communities, and we'll talk more about LA, but when you have communities that have been torched, knowing that fire may come again, how do you start to think about what the rebuild would look like? I think we have to take a really honest look at what 21st century fire is now capable of doing, which is generating firestorm energy that is unfightable by traditional firefighting means and that will burn houses, you know, not just by the neighborhood, but by the region.

So they lost, I think, 12,000 structures in LA in just a couple of days. You had over 100,000 people evacuated, colossal amounts of smoke and stress and cost. And so that's happening in more and more places around the world. Now this is really a global issue. And we focus on these individual regions as

we should. We need to focus on Jasper, we need to focus on LA, but we also need to focus on the system that's creating these hazards. And then do we just pretend that this was an anomaly, which is kind of what happened in Fort McMurray, they just built it back the same way. And, you know, vinyl siding is not a wise sheathing to use in the 21st century. Firefighters call that solidified gasoline. That's what they call vinyl siding. Tar shingles, you know, are also really flammable. So we have to really, we have to say, we have to rethink how we engage with our landscapes and our communities given that we have now through our own actions empowered nature to perpetrate extraordinary violence on places we live and care about. I want to come back to this in a moment. You're just in Southern California and this is a region

that has a history of fire and people have written about this, John Didion wrote about it extensively. There are others who have written about the fires that have tore through areas in Malibu and beyond. What did you see when you were down there? Well, I was in Orange County, which is just a few exits down I-5. And because of the wind patterns sweeping down out of the San Gabriel Mountains and the neighboring mountains Most of the smoke went out to sea and I certainly didn't tour the the destroyed areas You know, I saw enough in Fort McMurray I saw it in Redding, California which burned grievously with the help of a fire tornado in 2018 And it's it is it is terrible devastating damage to witness and if you're not there to help

you have no business being there. So it was there was a strange disconnect between Orange County which just looked like Southern California you know in its in its perfection except for the fact and this struck me as I drove down three days before the fires. I remember looking at the landscape and thinking, my goodness, it's January and boy do those hills look dry. And it didn't occur to me that they would burst into flame in a few days, but it looked, it just didn't look quite right. And you know, I'm from the wet Northwest and so it could have been that, but there's, they, they had the hottest summer in their history in Los Angeles followed by eight months of drought.

Jasper has also had similar heat records and extended drought, which enabled and empowered their fire. Fort McMurray had the same issue. Paradise, California, similar issues. So there's a theme here. There's connective tissue through the climate that we have to address. You've written about something in Fire Weather called,

am I saying this right, the Lucretius problem? Yes. What is that? Yeah, it's kind of a perceptual glitch in human nature that was identified by a poet, a Roman poet and philosopher named Lucretius back in 2000 years ago. And he observed that people tend to base their experience and assumptions on based on only what they themselves had

seen. And this is natural to do, but the distillation of that is the fool believes the tallest mountain in the world is the one he himself has seen. So it'd be like me saying the coast mountains are the biggest mountains and I haven't seen the Rockies. And so we see people fighting fires as if it was still 1995 and you hear firefighters saying this is totally different than the fires I was fighting in 1995. So people with 20 years in are encountering fires that they have never seen before doing things they've never seen before, doing things they've never seen before. And that happened in Fort McMurray, that happened in Los Angeles. So

these are neither of those firefighting services are strangers to big fires. And yet fires now are doing things that we simply couldn't imagine. And so we need to imagine beyond our own experience and derive lessons from other places in the world that have already seen these horrible extremes that basically turn firefighting efforts into, as they told me, life-saving efforts. All you can do is get people out of it. What does that mean practically?

If that idea that the worst that has happened is not the worst that could possibly happen. People are gonna move back into those communities. These are their homes, whether it's Lytton, whether it's Jasper, whether it's Los Angeles, whether it's Fort McMurray, this is where people live and this is where people want to live. So if you have to understand that even worse things

could come down the road, how does that shape what the future could look like in those communities? Or could it shape those communities? There are so many different responses to that, Matt, right now, there are people who will not rebuild, they will move away. There are other people who will kind of make it stand and try to build a more fire resilient home.

We saw some really interesting reporting on houses that survived the LA fires, but then they're standing there alone in this total ruin. So okay, you made it through the fire, but do you still want to stay here when your entire community has been forced to flee? We don't want to live, we're social beings, we don't want to live in solitude. So then, I mean the elephant in the room here, besides changing building codes, changing rules around what you can plant around your house.

So for example, in LA, houses that had succulent plants like ice plants growing around them fared better in the fire than drier plants. But the elephant in the room, besides climate, besides fossil fuels, is the insurance industry. And that's gonna be an issue probably in Jasper too. People are going to see higher insurance rates. People are seeing no insurance rates in large parts of the United States because insurance

companies are simply dropping them. They are bailing out because the risk is too high. And that should tell us something. What should it tell us? Well, it should tell us that we have a real issue with our vulnerability to climate-enhanced disasters. I think the bill for LA so far is around a quarter of a trillion dollars. And it's similar for Hurricane Helene, which trashed the American Southeast just a few

months ago. And so economies and countries can't withstand assaults like that repeatedly. And that is what climate change is telling us, is that we are going to, you know, when you look at graphs of billion dollar disasters in the United States set next to graphs of temperature rise and CO2 increase, they track each other perfectly. So this is in our future.

And we have to respond in a way that recognizes the new intensity of energy coming out of our weather and off our landscapes. And that ideally, like the ideal scenario would be to rebuild on a neighborhood scale in a way that to, so I'm not saying flee, I'm saying rebuild there, but rebuild there, recognizing how flammable it is and using structures and plantings and larger infrastructure that recognize the need for better escape routes and higher flammability. And also, I think you'll be able to get better insurance coverage if you all collectively

buy into a way of building that increases resilience. Which is just finally on that. I mean, we saw this when we were in Lytton. There was a push to make more defensive architecture, if I can put it that way, houses that might survive the next fire, but that's much more expensive. And then you price it, the people who perhaps

have been there for generations, and you have a moneyed class that moves in that can afford that. Do you need to have, I mean, there's a lot of blaming that's going around now from governments on these various fires and people pointing fingers. Do you need to have government invested in this to say, if people are going to stay here,

we need to make it work so that the people who were burned out can come back, but also that the next fire that comes will perhaps be less destructive in future. That's, I mean, that's, and again, that's another elephant in the room is the social justice aspect of climate change and its impacts is, you know, it's going to hit the most vulnerable, the hardest. And so then, yeah, I think that the state and the nation need, you know, has to step in if they want to keep their region viable. And that's really,

that's a big question is how do we keep our home place, our home province, our hometown, our home country viable for people to live in and presumably prosper. And so in the same way that the pandemic showed us where all the cracks are in our society, in our family, in our education system, in our communication system, climate change is doing that too. And so we're really feeling that in Jasper right now. Is there a sense that people are listening just finally? Are people listening to what you're saying?

You've been talking about this, you wrote this book that was read around the world, but is your sense as we see more and more of these disasters that people are listening? Based on the amount of media I've done over the past two weeks, Matt, they seem to be listening. I mean, I've been very, very busy and people have wanted to have really real,

difficult conversations and it's hard to do, it's hard to admit that the world isn't the same anymore. It's hard to admit that we're more vulnerable. And my sense from the conversations I've had is that people are girding their loins and starting to face that fact and really looking earnestly for solutions. And I really admire that and I really want to be part of that process. It's good to talk to you again, John. Thank you very much for this.

Thank you, Matt. Thanks for covering it. John Valiant is the author of Fire Weather, The Making of a Beast.