![One Saskatchewan family’s journey out of a burning Jasper](https://globalnews.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/jasper-wildfire-july24-2.jpg?quality=85&strip=all&w=720&h=379&crop=1)
One Saskatchewan family’s journey out of a burning Jasper
Global News
About 25,000 people were evacuated from the park, including roughly 5,000 residents of the town, according to Parks Canada.
As forest fires rage in Jasper, Alta., thousands of people have been forced to flee, including some from Saskatchewan.
For one Saskatoon family, it was a scary evening as one minute they were having supper while camping in Jasper and the next, they were trying to leave with a crowd of others.
“We were kind of at the tail end of almost a month-long canoe and road trip that we had taken,” Bryan Sarauer said. “We’d been up to the Yukon and had done some paddling up there and through Alaska and back through B.C., and we’d come down here.
“Monday, it was a beautiful afternoon. We had been out canoeing not far from the townsite. And we came back in for supper.… When we started to have supper there was smoke and you could see helicopters flying around.”
Sarauer said that as the weather changed and the wind picked up, umbrellas were flying down the street.
They soon found out roads were closing and people were being evacuated.
“We started noticing that the lineups at the gas stations were by then blocks long,” Sarauer said.
They went back to the campground where they were staying.