Jasper wildfire: Alberta minister urges improved unified command structure

Parliamentary hearings focused on this summer’s devastating wildfire in Jasper National Park continued on Monday where more discussions were had about what could potentially be done better the next time disaster strikes.
Alberta Public Safety and Emergency Services Minister Mike Ellis told the hearing committee that he believes provincial authorities should have been better integrated into the unified command structure tasked with dealing with the emergency.
“The fact is that (the townsite of) Jasper is surrounded by a national park where the fire originated,” he said.
“The challenge was that the Parks (Canada) superintendent has oversight for all emergency management decisions for both the park and municipality. This places the province in a position where we can certainly influence but not decide.”
Ellis thanked the Canadian Armed Forces as well as two federal ministers — Dominic LeBlanc and Harjit Sajjan — and said everyone involved in the disaster response worked toward a common goal centred on “the safety of Albertans.”
Ellis noted that Alberta has approved a disaster recovery program with a budget of about $149 million but that only a portion of those costs will be eligible for reimbursement under the federal Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements program even though the fire started in a national park.
Global News has reached out to Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault for a response to Ellis’ comments raising concerns about disaster recovery reimbursement.
Alberta Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen also spoke at the hearing and noted his government has implemented a unified command approach with municipalities across the province “to ensure a co-ordinated response in the future without delays.”
Kristopher Liivam, president of the private wildfire fighting company Arctic Fire Safety Services, also raised concerns about the command structure, telling the committee his company was hired by a resort owner and insurance provider to help with efforts but that the firefighters it brought in faced challenges including when it came to being allowed access to the park and being restricted from actually fighting fire.
In a statement issued to Global News, Parks Canada said “self-deployment, whether by volunteers or individuals offering their services, is not an accepted practice, as it can lead to a whole host of safety issues, putting many individuals at risk, while causing distraction and confusion at a time that is already very complex to manage.”
“However, after clarifying what Arctic Fire were actually doing there, they were eventually allowed in with specific instructions, and helped to fight the fire, which could have had far worse consequences without this swift and effective handling.”
While the federal Parks Canada agency is responsible for national parks, the jurisdictional issues when it came to fighting the fire were complicated for the Townsite of Jasper which has its own municipal government and is an Alberta municipality.
On Tuesday, Global News spoke with Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fires at Thompson River University, about how he believes Canadian jurisdictions could improve the way they fight wildfires.
He said he would like to see a national firefighting force be developed that could be nimble and deploy a fleet of aircraft and ground crews to areas at high risk of experiencing extreme fire weather to work with local authorities and prepare for the possibility of fires breaking out.
Flannigan, who has also appeared before a parliamentary committee on the wildfires, noted that scientists’ wildfire forecasts and models have become “pretty good” in terms of accuracy.
“If it prevents one Jasper or one Fort McMurray, it will pay for itself,” he said, noting that estimates released by the Insurance Bureau of Canada last month are that severe weather caused over $7 billion in insured losses in Canada this summer.
He noted that a number of factors, including weather conditions, fire fuels like dry vegetation and Jasper’s geography contributed to this summer’s fire getting about “as extreme as it gets.”
“(We need to ask ourselves), in retrospect, what could we do to prevent this?” he said, adding that he is in favour of a fulsome independent review of what happened in Jasper this summer and how to move forward.
Flannigan said there are generally three stages of fighting a wildfire. Ideally, when fires are small, he said firefighters should “action it early with sufficient resources.” If that is unsuccessful, he said there is an option of undertaking a “burnout operation” — starting a new fire to get out in front of where the wildfire is spreading that’s backing or fighting against the wind “so it’s lower intensity and manageable.”
“Eventually that wildfire and this burnout operation meet and the wildfire has no fuel to burn,” he said. If that does not work, Flannigan said “structural protection” is a last line of defence, which includes steps like using sprinklers on buildings.
“(The Jasper fire) was unstoppable. But when it started it was stoppable,” Flannigan said, adding he hopes a full review will determine if there was a window of opportunity to stop the fire that was missed.
Fire officials said firefighters battling the blaze the day the fire entered the Jasper townsite reported encountering a wall of flames over 100 metres tall and wind gusts in excess of 100 km/h.
Christian Messier, a professor of applied forest ecology at the Université du Québec, also appeared at Monday’s parliamentary committee hearing.
A translation of what he had to say saw him describe the Jasper wildfire as a “megafire” that occurred because of multiple factors. He also spoke about the role climate change plays in wildfire risk.
“Since the climate is warming rapidly, and Jasper is at a high latitude in the northern hemisphere where warming is increasingly present, the risk of having conditions conducive to megafires are of course increasing,” Messier said. “Early springs that are hot and dry, the presence of fuel such as deadwoods and softwoods, … hot and dry summers with lots of thunderstorms.
“What happened in Jasper was foreseen by a number of researchers.”
Officials have acknowledged that Jasper National Park, like much of Alberta’s forested area, has been left vulnerable to the threat of wildfire by the spread of mountain pine beetle over the years. By the end of 2022, over 2.4 million hectares of forest in the province had been affected by the beetles. Combined with hot and dry conditions, the vulnerable forests are susceptible to fire.
Messier noted there is an ongoing “risk of major disturbances in our forests with global warming.” He also addressed dead forests resulting from insect infestations and diseases, something he said they are more susceptible to because more trees are now “outside of their optimal climate zone.”
In July, Parks Canada CEO Ron Hallman responded to reporters’ questions about the parks’ preparedness ahead of the destructive wildfire.
“Parks Canada and our partners have done everything we reasonably could have done,” he said on July 29. “I have no doubt those efforts over many years … significantly mitigated what could been an even more devastating fire.”
Hallman added that since 1996, park personnel have worked on prescribed burns in the area, as well as strategically removing combustible materials from forested areas, installing protective sprinkler systems and “firesmarting” the community of Jasper.
Jasper National Park was evacuated because of wildfires on July 22, forcing about 25,000 people to flee. The wildfire moved into the townsite two days later and officials have estimated about 30 per cent of the townsite’s buildings were destroyed or damaged by fire.
Residents were allowed to return to the townsite on Aug. 16.