The Decibel - What Jasper can teach us about managing wildfires

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Last week, wildfires tore through the town of Jasper, Alta., and the surrounding national park. Around 30 per cent of the town was destroyed, but some are saying that it could have been much worse.Today, we’re speaking with Globe reporters Carrie Tait and Nancy Macdonald about what’s left of Jasper, how residents are doing, and how the fire became so destructive. Then we’ll speak with Jen Beverly, a wildfire researcher at the University of Alberta, about Jasper’s fire prevention efforts in the years leading up to this, and how communities can help protect themselves from wildfire.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Monday night was another regular day. We had finished up the supper with the guests, and I just went about my usual evening, and I was getting ready to call it a night, and I lay down on my bed, and 10 minutes later, my co-worker knocked on the door, and she said, I think there's a fire. Mel Thompson is a seasonal camp worker.

She was finishing a shift at the Shovel Pass Lodge in Jasper National Park. Yeah, by 8 o'clock, there was already big smoke. And the sky was just filling big clues of smoke and everything. And I think it was about 9 o'clock, we got an alert for just Jasper to evacuate. So we just started getting ready and stuff just in case. And by 9.30, we got an alert for the park to evacuate. So we went and notified. We had 10 guests.

We notified all of them and we all agreed that we were going to go up. And I'm unfamiliar with the area. I'm not a hiker by any means. The lodge Mel worked at isn't accessible by road. So in order to get to safety, they'd have to hike out. We left at about 10 o'clock that night and we didn't get out of the park till 5.30 that morning. On the way down, we alerted three campgrounds that none of them, nobody in those campgrounds were even aware of what was going on. So we got everybody out there and then we went

through a big meadow on the last incline and it's just I had to talk myself into it it was just it was my legs were done and they were cramping but before I left I grabbed a bottle of water and some juice boxes so I drank those and I was okay after that and it's just like I'm I'm in okay shape but it was I was that's yeah you're not expecting a 20-kilometer hike out with just headlamps and up mountain ridges and through rain and stuff. And, yeah, I think the last campground that we stopped in was five miles out before the trailhead. We were all just done. Like, I just pushed as hard as we could to get out of there. And then you get to the bottom, and I'm not from there.

I don't know anybody. I didn't, of of all times I didn't take my truck with me so I'm worrying about a ride to get out of there there's no cell service and there were people offering to to drive other some of our hikers to their vehicles and different lots and stuff so that was good and there were a few people that offered me a ride and just told me that we'll figure something out. Everyone was able to get out of the park. Mel got a lift to Hinton, a nearby town. As we were driving, both sides of the highway were just burnt right out and all black and still smoldering in some places. Some trees were still burning in parts of the ground.

And yeah, so it was pretty... It was a long, long day. That was Tuesday. On Wednesday, flames tore through the town of Jasper. About 30% of the town was destroyed. Today, we're talking to Globe reporters Carrie Tate and Nancy MacDonald, who've been covering the fires.

We'll talk about the state of Jasper, how residents are doing, and how this fire became so destructive. Then we'll speak with Dr. Jen Beverly, a wildfire researcher from the University of Alberta. She'll help us understand Jasper's fire prevention efforts in the years leading up to this, and what communities can do to help protect themselves from wildfire. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Carrie, Nancy, thank you both so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks for having us. Carrie, I know that you were actually in Jasper this past weekend.

What was it like there? Yeah, I was on the media tour in Jasper on Sunday, and it's really tricky to describe because the officials kept us away from the residential areas where the most damage was done. They didn't want images of people's burned out homes surfacing on the internet or on news stories prior to people seeing them with their own eyes. So we saw some of the downtown that was burned and it's not as severe there. But there are about 350 structures that were lost. Most of those were residential.

And so most of the downtown is intact. There will be smoke and water damage that we can't see. But Jasper, the town, excluding the residential areas, still looks like Jasper. And you can see that they have what they need to rebuild. And I think as Premier Daniel Smith describes it, bring that Jasper magic back. And you said it's about 350 structures or so that were lost. Do we have a sense, I guess, how much that represents within the town of Jasper? It's about 30% of the town.

Again, most of those are residential. Now there are chunks of the downtown that are missing, like row storefronts that have been torn down or burned down. And that was in part, they tore some of those down on purpose to prevent the fire from spreading to other buildings. But of course, there's also, you know, notable chunks of downtown missing the Mount Robson Inn and the adjacent cafe, that part. Those are kind of flattened. The Anglican Church, what remains of it is basically the field stone that they used to build the foundation. Yeah. Nancy, let me bring you to this, too. You've you've been in Valemont in B.C., which is where a lot of the residents from Jasper actually evacuated to. So Nancy, what are you hearing from people who left Jasperites headed the night they were evacuated. I mean, I think the first night, people were devastated.

I was at a brewery, and it felt like a funeral. There were tears, people hugging. You could see people looking at their phones. And I think a lot of people in Jasper have relatives who work for Parks. That's like Parks Canada. Parks Canada, yeah. So they were getting texts from either relatives or friends who work for Parks. That's Parks, like Parks Canada. Parks Canada, yeah. So they were getting texts from either relatives or friends who work for Parks saying the firefighters are pulling out and, you know, everyone knew what that meant. And then a little while later,

someone got a message that the gas station had blown up. The sense was that first night that everything was lost, that they were going to wake up to the entire town gone. The reality is that the school survived, the waterworks survived, the hospital survived. You know, what people have said to me is, you know, that's the basis of a town right there. We can rebuild. So, you know, I think people are devastated. But but there's some sense of resolve that, you know, we can keep going. You know, the town isn't lost. So there's there's hope, I guess, is what I was hearing. Yeah, that's, I mean, it's good to hear that there's a bit of a hopeful feeling now.

I guess, can I ask, are there any particularly memorable stories that you've heard from people? Oh, boy. Vailmont is so small that there's no clothing store. So a lot of people had left in the middle of a heat wave in shorts and sandals. But the next day it was 12 above. You know, people didn't have jeans. They didn't have jackets. So the Anglican Church opened a thrift store, you know, offering clothes free to evacuees. And I spoke with the minister there. And she said, you know, she had this moment in the morning where she looked up and she could see this woman who was almost afraid to enter the church.

And this woman said to the minister, you know, I realize that I'm about to start this new chapter in my life. I've got nothing. I'm restarting. And so she was, I guess, feeling anxious about taking this step and starting over. So the minister grabbed her in a hug and they walked it together. Carrie, before I let you go here, I believe you've also been talking to firefighters and officials there. What have they told you about the behavior of the fire? Like, I guess, what happened that led to this level of destruction?

So firefighters estimate that the wind that evening was between 100 kilometers to 150 kilometers an hour. And that's just something that they can't compete with. So you've got the wildfire from the south coming up, very, very, very hot, burning in the crown and moving very fast. And that's where sort of the second part of the fire takes over. And that's when the wind generated embers and it rained embers in town. The wall of fire, the forest fire, didn't necessarily breach town. It was the embers that jumped in and, you know, would land on a roof and ignite buildings and then spread that way. Highway 16 runs east-west through the park. That sort of connects from where I am in Hinton to where Nancy was in Valemont. On the south side of the highway, you can see that the fire burned very, very, very hot. It's black, charred, and it was moving in the crown there, moving up on the

treetops. On the north side, closest to town, the fire dropped to the ground. And that was because they had thinned out those trees and it had a different mix, the types of trees. And so that actually reduced the intensity of the fire as it approached town. And do we know what is the status of the fire right now? Right now, the North Fire, there's still a fire to the north. They are still worried that it threatens the community. It's going to depend on the weather and the wind, but you can still see them bucketing with helicopters in around the community.

There's still hot spots on the mountains. You can still see like swirls of smoke coming out of forested spots in the mountains. So it does, they have the sense that, you know, the worst is over, but there's still a nervousness that things could turn. Yeah. Carrie, Nancy, thank you both so much for taking the time to be here. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having me. We'll be back after this message. As Carrie said, there's been extensive work to protect Jasper from wildfires,

and Dr. Jen Beverly has been following those efforts for years. She's an associate professor in the Department of Renewable Resources at the University of Alberta. She studies wildfires and used to be a firefighter herself, and a researcher with the Canadian Forest Service. Jen, thank you so much for joining me today. Happy to be here. One of your areas of research is how communities are vulnerable to wildfires. So Jen, what did you learn about Jasper in particular? Yeah, well, you know, Jasper was included in a study that I did with a PhD student in my lab, Air Forbes. Last year, we published a study. Jasper was actually ranked

number three in the province in terms of its direction, what we call directional vulnerability, which means there's quite a few different directions from which fire can encroach on the community. And there's three kind of main valleys that serve as these pathways that basically channel fire towards the town. So yeah, it's a very vulnerable community. It's long been recognized as a vulnerable community. And there's just a lot of fuel in the surrounding valleys that can carry a fire. And when you say fuel, can you just remind us, like, what exactly are you referring to there? Different species are more or less flammable. The fuels that are most concerning when it comes to fire behavior are conifer fuels.

So those are the fuels, the trees that have needles, so spruce and pine, and they burn really, really well. And all those little needles, those fine fuels provide a lot of fuel for the fire. And so when we look at Jasper, what is the fuel load like? Or I guess if we look at last week, you know, what would you have said the fuel load is like around the town? Well, there's a lot of fuel in and around Jasper. There's been efforts to manage that fuel with FireSmart fuel reduction treatments and prescribed burning. FireSmart is a national, FireSmart Canada operates nationally and gives basically direction and advice on how you can reduce the threat of wildfire in different ways. And vegetation management is one of them. And it has been ongoing.

Parks Canada has been looking at that fuel management, Fire Smart, both at the landscape and around the community for many years and has been working towards managing those fuels. So the fuels are a huge factor and it's really the only thing that we can manage because we can't alter the weather and we, you know, we can't determine where lightning is going to strike. So, but we can manage the fuels proactively. Yeah. So you mentioned Jasper's kind of in the confluence of these three valleys. I guess knowing that, knowing what you know about Jasper, when you were hearing this news of the fire last week, what were you thinking? You know, obviously, the first thing I did was went to the assessment that we had done for Jasper. And you could see that the winds were coming predominantly from the south-southwest. And that is aligned with one of these pathways into town. And then there was also

a fire to just to the north, a bit to the northeast, and there was another pathway there. So, you know, obviously I was really, really concerned as soon as I saw the locations of those fires within one of these pathways, well, two of the pathways we had previously mapped. And so all you needed was a somewhat southerly wind to push that south fire into town in particular. And we've been hearing there was quite a bit of wind happening there. Right. And so under extreme wind conditions, when you have one of very dry, low relative humidities, high temperatures these these conditions are result in explosive fire behavior and once the fire gets going and you've got that connected fuels it's going to continue to burn until there's

some kind of change in conditions could it could be a little precipitation which is what happened or a change in the wind direction for example but there's not much you can do from a firefighting perspective once a fire is burning at those intensities. It's not going to be responsive to water bombers, and you certainly can't have crews directly fighting the flames on the ground. It's too intense. So, you know, in those cases, you have to get people out of harm's way, and that's what they did. Jen, you mentioned the fire prevention efforts. So let's talk a little bit more about that, because this is stuff that we can do in advance, obviously. Parks Canada and the municipality of Jasper have made efforts over the years to do this.

Can you walk me through the efforts here? Sure. So, you know, those treatments can involve different types of reducing the fuels, fuel reduction treatments. And they can also involve attempts to convert fuels to a totally different type. You know, maybe trying to create more open areas or grassy areas where there might have been forests. But essentially cutting down trees then? Exactly. Or conducting prescribed burns that kill the trees. You know, what I've seen in Jasper, and I haven't been involved in the fuel treatments themselves in recent years, I did study them a bit in the past, but what I've seen there is a lot of fuel reduction treatments. So that's going in and thinning areas, reducing the fuels. And you can also remove the lower limbs on the trees that makes it more difficult for fire

to move vertically from the surface into the canopy. And spacing out the trees by removing or thinning stands and removing some of the trees makes it more difficult for fire to travel horizontally from crown to crown should it get up into the canopy. And really much of that effort is about trying to keep the fire behavior on the surface. Once it gets up into a canopy, and when you have these conifer trees with these fine needles, those are very good at generating embers that can rain down into the built environment and set homes on fire. So you're trying to keep the fire on the surface, but that also means that the fire intensity is going to be lower and that's going to be more conducive to suppression. So you can then potentially have crews attacking the edge of the fire directly and putting it out.

And likewise, when it's on the surface, water bombers and heavy equipment are also going to be more effective at building fire line. So, you know, those treatments aren't intended to stop a fire, but they are intended to modify the fire behavior so that it is less of a threat, less embers, and it is easier to suppress. So that's a really important point that you're saying to kind of, you know, the goal is to keep it on the ground on the surface so it doesn't get into the canopy, doesn't spread as quickly. How does that also affect how firefighters, I guess, fight the fire if it's on the ground versus in the canopy? Right. So, I mean, once you've got a crown fire, once the fire is spreading at a high intensity and it's involving those aerial suspended fuels in the canopy, those needles, those live needles

on the tree branches, there is no way to safely fight that on the ground, right? The intensities would be so high that first of all, the tools that we have to construct fire line on the ground wouldn't be effective. So hand toodles and pumps and hose to try to actually dose the flames, the intensity would be too much. It's not going to have an effect. And it's also not safe to have people on the ground when you've got that kind of fire behavior. When you have a surface fire, it's a whole other game. So you can have people actually putting and dousing the flames directly and you can have heavy equipment building fire line helicopters, bucketing water to assist the firefighters on the ground.

You know, the hope is that that's enough to then take further action and put it out. But the treatments themselves won't do that. They're just intended to modify the behavior of the fire. So then I guess the big question is, you know, they're intended to modify the behavior. How effective are they in actually, you know, controlling things? How effective do they tend to be? You know, it's a great question. And we don't have a ton of data to evaluate that. And it's a good thing because, you know, a lot of these treatments are done in and around communities. And generally, we don't have tons and tons of communities burning. There have been instances, especially in recent years, where fires have

moved through treatment areas. And, you know, I've seen mixed reports. In some cases, it's clear they did have an impact and they achieved exactly what they were intended to achieve. The fire dropped down and that was a, you know, created the opportunity for crews to put the fire out. In other cases, I have also heard reports of fires moving through those treatments and the treatments having almost no effect on them, on the fire behavior. So I think it can depend on a lot of factors. It can depend on how big the treatment was, when it was done, the time that has passed, of course. So with the passage of time, you can expect the effect of the treatment to erode and it need retreatment. Certainly all of the modeling that we do suggests that those treatments have a threshold and there is,

you know, when it's really, really extreme, you shouldn't expect them necessarily to be able to stop that sort of vertical transition and crown fire involvement. So, you know, it's not a guarantee. It's never a guarantee. You know, from a weather perspective, when you have really extreme conditions, it can exceed those limits of these treatments. And, you know, it's possible a fire could burn through them. I'm thinking of something one of our reporters, Carrie Tate, was telling us. She said they thinned the trees on one side of the highway. This fire in Jasper here we're talking about.

They thinned the trees on one side of the highway and the fire was less intense on that side compared to the other side. And so I guess, Jen, do we have a sense of how effective these strategies were in this particular instance for this particular fire? I haven't seen direct reports of what happened when the fire encroached on the treatments. And if that's, you know, that's an observation that's being documented, then that's wonderful to hear. Certainly, we'll be able to collect some data and evaluate the extent to which those treatments had an impact in protecting the parts of town that weren't affected. And I wouldn't be surprised if they did. So, you know, really hopeful that what we'll hear back are some reports that provide support for those treatments and demonstrate that they can be effective in

protecting communities under even these extreme conditions. We've been talking a lot about Alberta. Are these kind of fire prevention strategies, are they employed elsewhere in Canada too? Do we know if we use these across the country? They've been used predominantly in Western Canada in the last, you know, 10, 15 years, especially, and have not been used to the same extent in eastern Canada, in part because a lot of the momentum for fuel management has come out of very difficult fire seasons and fires in western Canada. You know, the Slave Lake fire in Alberta in 2011, the Fort McMurray fire, the Horse River fire that impacted Fort McMurray in 2016. You know, when you take a look at these fires and the recommendations are very consistent,

they generally say we've got to be more proactive at trying to mitigate the risk. And we can't just rely on suppression to protect communities. And that means doing the managing the only part of this that we can, which is the fuels. In eastern Canada, there's different types of ecosystems. There's a lot more water for fire suppression. The climate generally is a little bit more moist, and they haven't had the same successive and severe fire seasons and catastrophic fires that we've had in western Canada. So I think that there is an increasing interest, certainly I've seen it, among fire management had in Western Canada. So that, you know, I think that there is an increasing

interest, certainly I've seen it among fire management agencies in Eastern Canada to start doing more proactive fuel management as well. Obviously, we've been talking a lot about fuel, but are there any other things, Jen, that you recommend to communities when they're trying to, you know, help plan these things, help keep fires at bay, or even just limit the damage? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, FireSmart Canada provides great information on what you can do more broadly, just, you know, beyond the fuel, preparing your home, hardening your property so that it is less receptive to ignitions, and that could be building materials and cleaning up yards and eaves troughs and those kinds of things. But there's also a lot of other things that communities and also in broader

jurisdictions people are looking at. So evacuation planning is one of them. You know, the scale of the problem that we have vast fire prone landscapes in across Canada. We have people and communities embedded within those landscapes. We can't possibly expect to fuel manage that entire problem. You know, you've got to do what you can to protect the community with prevention, for example, to stop ignitions by people. And also getting people out of harm's way

with evacuation planning is the last resort. Ultimately, you can rebuild the communities, but you want to keep people safe. Jen, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Oh, thank you for having me. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy-McLaughlin, and Michal Stein.

David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.