Wildfire near Jasper National Park prompts evacuation order and highway closures

Multiple wildfires in Jasper National Park flared up with a vengeance late Monday night, forcing all park visitors along with the 4,700 residents of the Jasper townsite to flee west with little notice over mountain roads through darkness, soot, and ash.

Multiple wildfires in Jasper National Park flared up with a vengeance late Monday night, forcing all park visitors along with the 4,700 residents of the Jasper townsite to flee west with little notice over mountain roads through darkness, soot, and ash.

Photos and video shared on social media illuminated a midnight cavalcade of bumper-to-bumper cars and trucks, headlights on, red tail lights glowing, cars inching, stopping, starting, crawling through swirling tendrils of acrid smoke.

“It's wall-to-wall traffic," said Edmonton resident Carolyn Campbell in a phone interview from her vehicle.

“It (the smoke) is pretty thick. We've got masks in the car."

Campbell said it took hours to move just seven kilometres. She said they had enough gas but worried for others who fled with little in the tank.

The Jasper townsite -- and the park's main east-west artery Highway 16 -- were caught in a fiery pincer. Fires threatening from the northeast cut off highway access east to Edmonton.

Another fire roaring up from the south forced the closure of the north-south Icefields Parkway.