Jorge Castillo, a cook at Beckers Gourmet Restaurant, says there was nothing left of his family’s home in Jasper when they returned after the wildfire.
When Jorge Castillo was finally allowed to return to Jasper, he drove to his home in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains hoping to see at least some remnants of the house he and his family had lived in for the past four years.
He was expecting to find part of it still standing after last year’s wildfire. But “there was nothing,” said Mr. Castillo, a chef who works at a restaurant south of town.
He, his wife and their teenaged son and daughter are living in a rental condo in Hinton, 45 minutes east of Jasper.
The owner of the house in Jasper that the Castillos had been renting has promised they can return when it is rebuilt – a process, the landlord has said, that will likely take eight months.
The soil needs to be tested. The building permits need to be approved.
“They have the blueprints. They have everything ready, but they can’t start building the house,” Mr. Castillo said. “I can tell you, it is hard.”
An elk in Jasper National Park, with signs of the 2024 wildfire still visible. The fire would ultimately spread over 32,000 hectares, destroying much of the town of Jasper.
It has been a year since the Jasper Wildfire Complex destroyed 358 of the 1,113 structures in the Alberta town, making it one of many Canadian communities to be devastated in recent years by the country’s increasingly damaging wildfire seasons.
Three fires were reported south of Jasper on the afternoon of July 22, 2024. Gusting winds merged the fires and pushed them toward town, with flames 50 metres high, and growing.
The fire would ultimately spread over 32,000 hectares.
Residents were ordered to evacuate that evening. They were told to pack enough clothes for three days.
Despite firefighters’ best efforts, the fire overtook the town on July 24. Residents were not allowed to return until Aug. 16.
Town officials have planned commemorative activities this week, including signing thank you cards for neighbouring communities that helped in the aftermath of the fire, an art therapy workshop and online sharing circles for displaced Jasperites.
For many of the hundreds of residents still displaced by the fire and hoping for a return to normalcy and home, the rebuilding process has been frustratingly slow. As of last week, just 65 building permits have been issued and only two residential properties, one apartment building and several commercial properties destroyed by the fire are currently under construction.
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Many residents are still waiting on soil remediation testing to make sure there are no contaminants in the ground, applying for building permits and filing insurance claims.
Meanwhile, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith last week demanded an apology from the town over a report criticizing her government for hindering efforts to combat the fire.
Amidst all these frustrations and tensions, town officials are urging patience.
“We all want to see recovery progress as fast as possible,” said Doug Olthof, acting director of the Jasper Recovery Coordination Centre. “It’s just that recovery is not a fast process.”
Trailers housing families who lost their homes, about 25 kilometres outside Jasper. Hundreds of residents are still displaced after the fire.
Significant progress has been made to rebuild the town, Mr. Olthof said, with 100 per cent of properties having received permits for removing debris and 99 per cent of the physical debris now removed from them.
“There’s always this sort of temptation to point to one specific thing that’s slowing down or that’s the cause of a rebuild not happening very quickly,” he said. “The reality of the matter is that recovery from a natural disaster like this is a very complex process that takes quite a lot of time.”
Last week, Parks Canada and the Red Cross announced $5-million of funding to support residents with costs associated with soil testing and removal.
“There are a very large number of different contaminants that can result from a house burning, and testing is not sort of a quick and dirty thing. It takes a bit of time,” Mr. Olthof said.
Over five days last July, the wildfire burnt through Nancy Addison’s community of 40 years. Six months earlier, Ms. Addison’s son had started as a volunteer firefighter; she never imagined he’d be sending her updates as the fire engulfed her home and the century-old St. Mary & St. George Parish where she volunteered.
“None of us have ever forgotten. I wake up every morning and I think about it, what we lost. … We lost everything material, but we miss each other more than anything,” Ms. Addison said.
Since the fire, she hasn’t been able to return home, trekking between Vancouver, Ottawa and now Manitoba, living with family and friends. Clearing contaminants from the soil, dealing with insurance and rebuilding a less flammable structure takes time. Ms. Addison and her husband don’t anticipate having a house in Jasper before 2027.
“It’s just been very, very emotionally draining. It’s pushed us to our limits,” she said.
Yet, Ms. Addison said the fire deepened her connection with her community. She regularly calls other members of her church – who are now displaced across the country – and they discuss how to build anew.
“Jasper’s got a heart, and we don’t just care about ourselves. We care about each other. We definitely want to move back there, because of the community. It’s the best place on Earth as far as we’re concerned. I know there’s other communities that are as wonderful, but Jasper’s ours,” Ms. Addison said.
A family in downtown Jasper. The town expects the full recovery to take 10 years, Mr. Olthof says.
Currently 521 people are living in temporary accommodations acquired by Parks Canada and managed by the Red Cross.
Many of them will be there a long time.
Rebuilding the structures lost in the fire is expected to take up to five years, Mr. Olthof said.
The town expects the full recovery to take 10 years, he added.
That full recovery includes not only the economic redevelopment of Jasper, but also the rebuilding of what Mr. Olthof called “community, of social connection and community activity” that defined the town prior to the fire.
The town is recruiting volunteers for a program called Pathfinders that trains people in peer-to-peer support, mental health, first aid, suicide prevention and the processes involved in recovery, from getting permits to help with insurance claims.
So far, 40 people have been trained through the program. The town hopes to have 150 Pathfinders, who wear backpacks with a logo on it, or have hats provided by the town so that anyone with questions can tap them on the shoulder to talk.
“The first thing we need to recognize with something like this is, this constitutes a mass trauma event,” Mr. Olthof said. “What we expect to see, and what we have seen, is a considerable increase in the need for psychosocial supports.”
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As the town rebuilds homes and its sense of community, Ms. Smith is demanding it apologize and retract a report released last week.
The report, commissioned by the town and based on surveys of more than 300 firefighters and other front-line staff, said Ms. Smith’s government complicated efforts to fight the fire by attempting to make decisions and seeking information even though it did not have jurisdiction, because Jasper is a National Park under federal control.
“While Alberta Wildfire actively supported firefighting operations and participated in the [Incident Management Team], jurisdictional overlap with the province created political challenges that disrupted the focus of incident commanders leading to time spent managing inquiries and issues instead of directing the wildfire response and re-entry,” the report states.
Ms. Smith dismissed the report at an unrelated event on Friday.
“Whatever it is that they’re trying to do to deflect blame, I’m not impressed with it. And I would ask for an apology,” she said.
“This report comes as a shot out of the blue. It’s unfair, it’s untrue and I would like them to withdraw it,” she said. “Pointing fingers at others when they should be looking at what they can do to improve their own response would have been a far better outcome as we approach the year anniversary.”
Mr. Castillo says he hopes to move back to Jasper as soon as possible.
This will be a sombre week in Jasper. As the community comes together, it is eager to welcome visitors.
“So much of Jasper that people know and love was unaffected,” said Tyler Riopel, chief executive officer of Tourism Jasper. “It’s still an enchanting place for people to come.”
Visits to Jasper are expected to be down 20 per cent this summer as a result of campsites and hotels lost in the fire, according to the Chamber of Commerce.
Welcoming tourists isn’t just helpful for the town’s economy, Mr. Olthof said.
“It’s also part of our character as a community that we are geared toward welcoming people from across Canada and around the world,” he said.
At Beckers Gourmet Restaurant, where Mr. Castillo works as a chef, business has thankfully been busy, he said.
The drive to and from Hinton is costly, but Mr. Castillo hopes to move back to Jasper as soon as possible.
“My daughter is still in the high school here, and I asked her if she’d want to change to a school in Hinton,” Mr. Castillo said. “She said, ‘No, I would like to stay in Jasper,’ so I need to come back here.”
With a report from Sophia Coppolino
A sign on a temporary fence in Jasper. The community is eager to welcome visitors.