A raging wildfire has devastated the western Canadian tourist town of Jasper and firefighters were working on Thursday to save as many buildings as possible, authorities said.
Jasper is in the middle of Jasper National Park, in the province of Alberta. The town and the park, which draw more than 2 million tourists a year, were evacuated on Monday, when officials estimated there were 15,000 visitors in the park.
“There is no denying that this is the worst nightmare for any community,” Alberta premier Danielle Smith told reporters, saying the fire was still out of control.
“We’re seeing potentially 30 per cent to 50 per cent structural damage ... that’s going to be a significant rebuild.”
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Parks Canada said there had been a “significant loss” of buildings inside the town but added it could not give specific details of the damage or which areas had been hit.
Video from the town showed entire blocks had burned to the ground, including a church.
Jasper mayor Richard Ireland said the town was beginning to come to terms with “the devastating impact” of a fire that had ravaged the community.
One major concern for responders is if the fire reaches the Trans Mountain oil pipeline, which can carry 890,000 barrels per day of oil from Edmonton to Vancouver.
“At this time there is no indication of damage to our infrastructure, and the pipelines continue to operate safely,” pipeline operator Trans Mountain said in a statement.
The federal government and other cities in Alberta are sending emergency crews. In addition, a total of 400 firefighters from Mexico, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand are due to arrive in the coming days.
There are currently 176 wildfires burning in Alberta, more than 50 of which are out of control. Around 10 of those blazes are close to the border with British Columbia, where dozens of fires are also out of control.
Officials said that at one point on Wednesday the flames had reached a height of 120m and were moving at 15m a minute.
Ashley Kliewer, co-owner of a restaurant in the middle of Jasper, told the Canadian Broadcasting crop she was devastated.
“I don't think anyone will be returning to Jasper any time soon and life is not going to be anywhere near what it was – it really is the end of an era,” she said.
The Jasper fire could be one of the most damaging in Alberta since a 2016 conflagration that hit the oil town of Fort McMurray, forcing the evacuation of all 90,000 residents. The blaze destroyed 10 per cent of all structures in the city and shut in more than a million barrels per day of oil output.
Elsewhere, thousands of people were evacuated in northern California overnight, as yet another rapidly growing wildfire raged, joining hundreds of blazes in the Pacific Northwest and Canada that are sending smoke across swathes of the region, fire officials and weather services said.
The Park Fire in Butte County, California, exploded overnight from about 566 hectares on Wednesday to about 18,400 hectares on Thursday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
It’s burning in California’s Central Valley about 130km north of the state capital Sacramento, and was only 3 per cent contained on Thursday morning, said Cal Fire public information officer Dan Collins. No injuries were reported. Thousands were ordered to leave their homes.
“We have 400 firefighters and personnel on the scene, but we have units headed our way from all across the state,” Collins said. “The help is needed.”
More than 4,000 people were evacuated in Butte County and the city of Chico, said Megan McMann a spokesperson for the Butte County Sheriff’s Office.
The largest fire now burning in the United States, Oregon’s Durkee Fire, has burned at least 97,000 hectares, threatened multiple small towns, scorched ranch land and killed cattle by the hundreds, local media reports said.
High winds with lightning strikes Wednesday and overnight could fan the flames, said Marc Chenard, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland.
The fire, about 160km northwest of Boise, Idaho, was zero per cent contained on Thursday morning. More wind was forecast and lightning possible. – Reuters
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