Wildfire descends on townsite of Jasper, Alberta

Around 5 o’clock Wednesday afternoon, Parks Canada officials issued an advisory that if there was anyone in Jasper, Alberta who had not evacuated town they must leave now. They posted to social media that wildfire had reached the Jasper townsite at 6:40 p.m. and officials says the fire south of Jasper, driven by strong winds, then breached the fire guard and attacked the town itself.

They say fireguards couldn’t be completed with heavy equipment because the equipment had to be pulled off the fireline for safety and water bombers were unable to assist due to dangerous flying conditions while suppression efforts earlier in the day by helicopter bucketing proved ineffective.

By 8:30 p.m. it was determined that air quality had deteriorated to the point that wildland firefighters and others without self-contained breathing apparatuses needed to evacuate to Hinton. Structural firefighters remained in town working to save as many structures as possible and to protect critical infrastructure, including the wastewater treatment plant, communications facilities, the Trans Mountain Pipeline and others. Ten to 20 millimetres of rain was in the forecast with hopes it would arrive as promised and help reduce fire activity.

In British Columbia this morning there are 425 wildfires burning and 234 are out of control. In Saskatchewan there are 102 wildfires burning and 13 are not contained. The fire of note according to the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency is the Davis fire northeast of La Ronge near Missinippe and in the last update was more than 33-square kilometres in size. If you draw a line across the province north of Meadow Lake across to Nipawin and then to the Manitoba border, everything north is under an Air Quality Advisory due to wildfire smoke.