1st bus tour for evacuees of Jasper goes ahead as Trudeau visits fire command centre
The first bus tours into a partially-burned Jasper went ahead Monday morn‐ ing, as officials from multi‐ ple levels of government, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, attended briefings in nearby Hinton, Alta.
According to Alberta Pre‐ mier Danielle Smith, buses left from Hinton and Edmon‐ ton Monday, carrying 62 pas‐ sengers. Another bus, from Valemount, B.C., will leave on Wednesday.
A total of 563 people have registered. Media are not permitted on the tours.
Priority is being given to those whose homes were damaged or destroyed in the wildfire that ripped through the town more than a week ago. Residents are not al‐ lowed to leave the bus during the tour for safety reasons.
Trudeau attended a tech‐ nical presentation with Smith and Mike Ellis, Alberta's min‐ ister of public safety and emergency services, Monday morning.
"I think all of us took away how important it was to have unified command - having the municipal government as well as our government, as well as the federal parks - all working together as we have gone through the last num‐ ber of days," Smith told re‐ porters Monday afternoon.
"When I spoke with the prime minister, I said it would be my hope that that would continue through re‐ construction."
Posting on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Trudeau noted that he had been briefed by the incident re‐ sponse team in Hinton.
"This wildfire season has devastated communities, and firefighting efforts are still ongoing. We're making sure Alberta has everything they need to respond to these fires and help rebuild Jasper," Trudeau wrote.
There has been "incredi‐ ble" progress made in the townsite when it comes to restoring power and critical services, Smith said, but there is no firm re-entry date right now.
Ellis said more informa‐ tion on a 24-year-old Calgary man, who died after being in‐ jured by a falling tree while fighting a wildfire northeast of Jasper, will be forthcom‐ ing.
According to the Jasper Wildfire Complex Unified Command, which is com‐ prised of members of both Parks Canada and the Munic‐ ipality of Jasper, it happened around 2 p.m. MT Saturday.
Ellis reiterated his condo‐ lences to the man's family and colleagues.
Despite the tragedy and destruction, Smith told re‐ porters she was in awe of the spirit of the evacuees she's spoken with.
"It's remarkable. You talk to structural firefighters who knew that they'd lost their own home and continued fighting because they knew that the had to draw a line to be able to protect both the town and the critical infra‐ structure," she said.
"Now [people] are just hunkering down and saying, 'What do we do to get our town back to normal?'" Current fire situation There are 858 people cur‐ rently fighting the fire, ac‐ cording to Dean MacDonald, one of the incident comman‐ ders with Parks Canada.
Despite the cool weather in the area, MacDonald said it doesn't take much for fire behaviour to pick up again, as most of the fuel for the fire is still dry.
"Right now, we're taking advantage of the fact that we're going to try to get as many people on the ground as we can, in places we could not get them," he told re‐ porters Monday.
MacDonald said it's good to have political leaders come down and see the inci‐ dent command centre and said he knows the team has their full support.
Trudeau was not touring Jasper on Monday, in part be‐ cause he wanted to give resi‐ dents some space, MacDon‐ ald said, as they were seeing the destruction for the first time. Many of them lost their homes in the fire.
As for those whose homes are still standing, they will need to get insurance ad‐ justers onto their property to assess the livability of their homes, according to Chris‐ tine Nadon, incident com‐ mander for the municipality of Jasper.