This story includes details on the impacts of climate change that may be difficult for some readers. If you are feeling overwhelmed by this crisis situation here is a list of resources on how to cope with fears and feelings about the scope and pace of the climate crisis.
All the top-line news from Alberta is about Jasper, where a raging crown fire entered the town Wednesday and is moving so fast that authorities can’t stop to tally or report out the extensive damage it is wreaking. British Columbia was battling 425 wildfires at latest report, most of them believed to have been caused by lightning, and 54% were classified as out of control.
A current cooling trend in the weather does offer some hope to displaced or anxious residents as well as firefighting crews, at least in the northern and central parts of the province. The southeast is expected to continue warm and extremely dry, however, with strong winds.
But any such reprieve comes too late for the beloved townsite of Jasper, Alberta, which is now burning despite valiant efforts to keep it safe.
The wildfire “is simply absolutely our community’s worst nightmare. Like all the residents, I feel essentially devastated, shattered, and absolutely helpless in the face of nature, which is just so powerful,” said Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland, visibly stricken, in an interview with CBC News. (Nature has a hand, but an endless stream of data and analysis shows that the severe drought and heat brought on by climate change make disasters like this more frequent and severe.)
Jasper Burns
Firefighters made heroic efforts to keep Jasper safe from two wildfires that began racing towards the town and its eponymous national park Monday night at a speed that forced authorities to call for a mandatory nighttime evacuation.
In addition to personnel battling the fires on the ground, authorities tried bucketing efforts via helicopter, heavy equipment to build fireguards, and water bombers. All such efforts failed due to the speed with which the fires were moving, and their smoke- and flame-filled intensity, reports the Canadian Press.
Earlier on Wednesday, all ground firefighting personnel without self-contained breathing gear had to evacuate due to worsening air quality, and then “a last-ditch effort to use controlled burns to reroute the fire to natural barriers like Highway 16 and the Athabasca River failed.”
Late afternoon on Wednesday, those fighting to save the town lost that battle as one of the fires, “in a wall of flame,” entered the town limits and began incinerating homes and businesses.
“Fire crews were witnessing 300- to 400-foot flames in a fully-involved, continuous crown fire and a fire spread rate of approximately 15 metres per minute,” James Eastham, a Parks Canada wildfire information officer, told CBC News.
“The extent of the damage is not known, but park officials say numerous buildings in the historic townsite in the heart of Jasper National Park have been lost,” writes CBC, citing latest reports warning that “critical infrastructure, including the wastewater treatment plant, the hospital, [and] communications facilities” are all endangered.
The Trans Mountain pipeline is also in the path of the fire. “We continue to safely operate the pipeline and have deployed sprinkler protection for the station as a preventative measure,” Trans Mountain told BNN Bloomberg in an email.
Ottawa has confirmed that it will be deploying federal resources and personnel to aid the firefight as well as evacuations.
The conflagration currently gripping Jasper and its national park is just one of 176 wildfires currently burning in Alberta, although it is heavily implicated in driving up the number of wildfire evacuees in the province. Latest reports put the number of displaced north of 30,000, including the roughly 10,000 residents of Jasper and the thousands of people, including families with small children, who were visiting the park when it went up in smoke.
The current tide of Alberta evacuees also includes the 5,500 members of Little Red River Cree Nation, who had to flee their homes in the communities of Fox Garden, Garden River, and John D’Or Prairie last weekend.
Little Red River is now completely evacuated, its members fleeing the advance of a wildfire that is part of the Semo Complex, an inferno currently estimated at roughly 96,000 hectares.
“Yeah, we’re scared to lose it all,” said John D’Or Prairie resident Jason Saovord, who had fled to safety in Edmonton with loved ones when he spoke to the CBC on Sunday.
Another Mountain Paradise in Flames
Six hundred kilometres south of Jasper, residents of Silverton, British Columbia (population 200) have been ordered to evacuate from their tiny hamlet perched on the shores of the deep blue-green waters of Slocan Lake, itself overlooked by the soaring peaks of the Valhallas.
The evacuation order came Wednesday night, following many days of evacuation alert, after multiple wildfires were sparked by a thunderstorm that romped through the paradisical West Kootenay region last week.
Long-term Slocan Valley resident Laura Tiberti, 77, was out dog-walking with a friend last Wednesday night in New Denver (population 520, five kilometres north of Silverton) when the storm struck.
“The lights went out in town, and 15 minutes later, we saw the mountainside across the lake turn red,” Tiberti told The Energy Mix. “Holy s–t, that thing is exploding up there!” Tiberti recalled telling her friend.
The two women were witnessing the outbreak of a wildfire near Nemo Creek (now 800 hectares), on the west side of Slocan Lake. The Aylwin Creek fire (400 hectares), which most immediately threatens Silverton now, would have started around the same time.
Jan Fraser, age 83, another long-time resident of Slocan Valley who now lives in Nelson, said she is deeply concerned for the well-being of her family members and friends whose lives remain deeply rooted in the 100-kilometre-long valley.
That includes Fraser’s granddaughter, Emma, 37, who recently launched her fledgling clothing design business, a lifelong dream, near Lemon Creek (53 kilometres south of Silverton).
“They’re not sleeping. They’re anxious,” Fraser told the Mix. Emma is among the hundreds now under evacuation alert in the immediate area, threatened by the Ponderosa Fire complex.
Feeling the Crisis in Your ‘Heart and Gut’
Fraser testified to her emotional confusion as she recognized this week how the climate crisis ceased to be something she understands—and is troubled by—just intellectually, now that her own loved ones are threatened. The wildfires in the Slocan Valley she now feels in her heart and her gut, Fraser said.
“Why do I feel this difference, and where is my empathy when a climate disaster is further away?” she asked. “I am reminded why so often we hear about Indigenous peoples talking about the power of story—stories being how the near and the far get connected.”
Heart and gut feelings of similar intensity but with different drivers were on display Wednesday night in the Slocan Valley at a public meeting to update local residents on the wildfire situation. Roughly 200 people showed up to hear a briefing by the B.C. Wildfire Service, officials from the Regional District of the Central Kootenay (RDCK), and the RCMP.
“Citing an age-old sentiment that has been the mantra of valley residents since American Vietnam War resisters headed north in the mid-1960s and settled in the Slocan Valley, one resident asked what the consequences were of defiance of an evacuation order, if it were to be given for Slocan and the surrounding residences,” reports the Nelson Daily News.
“My question is this: If we choose not to leave because it is our home and we are going to defend our home, what happens?” she asked. Her question generated “loud applause.”
After expressing empathy for the questioner and her question, RDCK Community Sustainability Manager Dan Seguin pointed to the added risks faced by first responders when people stay behind.
“If you are asked to leave and you have an evacuation order and you choose to stay, that is up to you. And you are allowed to stay there as you want, but you are going to have people coming to check on you and knocking on your door because they are concerned for your safety,” he said.
“We are not going to be pulling people out, but we are going to keep coming to check on you as long as it is safe and we will keep recommending that you leave,” agreed Thomas Gill, commander of the RCMP’s Slocan and Naksup detachments.
Resilience in Heartbreak: ‘We All Got Out’
Asked by the CBC News how he would prepare his constituents to face what may ultimately await them once the wildfire in their hometown has been extinguished, Jasper mayor Ireland sought to balance realism with hope.
“I certainly want to prepare them for significant loss, but I wanted to temper that with a bit of a message of optimism. Our community has been through hardships, nothing quite like this before, and we have been resilient, and I’m expecting that that will surface again,” Ireland said.
“And if there is any silver lining in all of this, it is… that everyone got out safely. Yes, losing structures in the community is like losing a close friend. We are so used to the character of our community. But the people are the heartbeat of every community, and the people have been saved. And that is significant. We can find a way to rebuild. We can find each other to hug, because we all got out.”
