Good morning.
The wildfire that devastated Jasper last week has been extinguished within the townsite, authorities said Monday, and crews are slowly bringing power back. Because fires continue to burn nearby, there is no timeline yet for when people might be able to return.
Some 30 per cent of Jasper’s 1,113 structures were destroyed, the majority of them homes, when the fire swept into the town on Wednesday evening. About 20,000 had been forced to flee last week Monday.
For the Jasper locals who made their way 90 minutes west to Valemount, B.C., the terror and heartache of losing their homes has been soothed somewhat by the outpouring of kindness and support by those in the tiny community.
There isn’t much retail in Valemount, but the local Anglican church has a thrift store – no one from Jasper has to pay. The operator of the golf course has turned his fairways into a campground, accommodating hundreds. There are people sleeping at the legion, the community hall, the church. The Flying Goat restaurant has offered free meals.
Initially, 16,000 evacuees flooded into Valemount. Up to 1,500 remain, all confronting an uncertain future with hundreds of houses gone in Jasper and no idea when it might be safe to return even to survey the damage.
Reporter Nancy Macdonald arrived in town Wednesday evening just as some of the evacuees gathered at a local pub. Elation at having reached safety mingled with hope that the town would be spared. But that turned in an instant, as the evacuees learned that most of the firefighters had been forced to abandon the town because of ever more dangerous conditions.
Some started receiving photos of the devastation on their phones. A group huddled together in a hug, despairing of the loss of the life they knew and grateful no one was killed.
“I don’t even have shoes,” said Hannah Bosso, an Australian native who married a Canadian and had been working as a bartender in Jasper, through tears.
She told Nancy that, though she was used to wildfires in Australia, this one moved faster than any that she’d ever experienced.
Valemount is like a sister community to Jasper: “It’s where Jasper folks go to settle down when they finally grow up,” Ms. Basso said.
As Nancy writes, the town is small enough that each of the 11 graduating students from Valemount Secondary has their photo displayed on a lamp post on Fifth Avenue, the town’s main drag. That kind of community spirit has embraced the evacuees.
Around 11:45 p.m. last week Monday, Nicole Dryden and her husband learned people from Jasper were headed their way.
Within hours, they had taken in a group of eight Ukrainian refugees: “They keep saying: Two months ago, we evacuated our country. Where do we go now?”
Rev. Kim McNaughton noticed an evacuee standing frozen in the doorway of the tiny wooden church where the thrift store has been set up. Stepping into the store meant accepting her new reality, the evacuee told the minister: Everything was gone. The evacuee didn’t even own a sweater. She was starting over.
So Rev. McNaughton grabbed her in a hug. Then they walked together into the darkened vestry – and her new reality.
“People are in shock. They don’t have anything,” said Rev. McNaughton, who was recounting the evacuee’s story.
When the evacuation order was issued last week Monday, B.C.’s Emergency Management Minister, Bowinn Ma, said her office was warned that the thousands fleeing Jasper would have no choice but to head west to Valemount.
With strapped resources in British Columbia because of the province’s own dire forest fire conditions, evacuees were encouraged to take hours-long, circuitous routes back to reception centres in Grande Prairie, Calgary and Edmonton. Ms. Ma said Alberta had assured B.C. that the evacuees could be accommodated in Alberta.
But if anyone in Valemount shared Ms. Ma’s worries about stressed resources, no one was telling Nancy that. Instead, Brian Oates, the general manager of the Valemount Pines golf course, said he’s been making coffee and cooking breakfast.
“I stood directing people to the driving range, where they could park their camper or set up a tent,” he told Nancy.
“I just kept asking the dumbest question: How are you doing? A lot of people, they just started crying.”
This is the weekly British Columbia newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.