Parks Canada official says wildfire in Jasper National Park could burn for months
CTV
A Parks Canada official says a wildfire that's destroyed hundreds of structures in the town of Jasper and continues to burn out-of-control in the national park could still be burning months from now.
A Parks Canada official says a wildfire that's destroyed hundreds of structures in the town of Jasper and continues to burn out-of-control in the national park could still be burning months from now.
"This fire is the largest one that Jasper National Park has recorded in the last 100 years," Landon Shepherd, a deputy incident commander with the federal agency, told a news conference on Saturday afternoon in nearby Hinton, Alta.
"We're going to be working on this wildfire, we expect, over the next three months at least. What the last five years has taught us is that the fire season in Jasper tends to last well into the fall."
Shepherd said the region got about 12 millimetres of rain over about a day and a half, and while that was good, there were still active hot-spots near the community. And, he said, fire activity was beginning to pick up again, although not to the same degree as last week.
More than 20,000 people in and around the town nestled in the Rocky Mountains four hours west of Edmonton were ordered to evacuate late Monday night due to fast-moving wildfires.
Parks Canada has estimated 30 per cent of the town's structures were damaged by the wildfire, with 358 of the town's 1,113 structures destroyed.
Among the properties affected by the wildfire include the well-known Maligne Lodge.
