{"id":523421,"date":"2026-03-08T23:31:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T23:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/523421\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T23:31:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T23:31:16","slug":"alberta-mountain-towns-deal-with-low-grade-anxiety-as-wildfire-season-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/523421\/","title":{"rendered":"Alberta mountain towns deal with \u2018low-grade anxiety\u2019 as wildfire season begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite spring snow still dusting parts of Alberta, it\u2019s now officially wildfire season, and with it comes once again the gnawing worry about which community will next be touched by nature\u2019s fickle finger of destruction.<\/p>\n

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But in the Rocky Mountain towns of Canmore and Hinton, they aren\u2019t waiting to find out.<\/p>\n

Both say they haven\u2019t forgotten the fate of Jasper in 2024, when fires torched a third of the mountain town\u2019s structures and forced 25,000 to flee in the dead of night.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing a community, very much like ours \u2026 a tourist destination surrounded by trees \u2026 it could happen to you,\u201d Canmore Mayor Sean Krausert said in an interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just a reminder of how devastating wildfire is and it certainly was one of the motivators for us in the work we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Krausert said Canmore is in the midst of a multi-phase project to build a fireguard around the town. The fireguards clear a strip of land of trees and other foliage to stop a rampaging fire in its tracks by giving it nothing to feed on.<\/p>\n

One fireguard phase has been completed on the south-facing slopes of the nearby mountains that get the most sun and are therefore the driest.<\/p>\n

A second fireguard is well underway. On a ridge overlooking Canmore, the trees have been razed, leaving behind dozens of piles of debris, some up to 10 metres high, that will likely be burned next winter.<\/p>\n

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A third project will see a 150-metre wide swath run 15 kilometres south down the valley.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI think all of us who live in the valley as we go through wildfire season have some low grade anxiety,\u201d Krausert said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI don\u2019t think you can live in a valley full of trees and be comfortable given the wildfires in the last number of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Work is going on in town, too.<\/p>\n

Thirteen neighbourhoods are in the Canmore FireSmart program, which urges homeowners to, for example, clean pine needles out of their gutters and keep debris off the roof.<\/p>\n

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\u201cA big part of the problem is actually the ember showers that travel two kilometres ahead of the wildfire,\u201d said Simon Bagshaw, Canmore\u2019s FireSmart coordinator. \u201cThey land on woodpiles, they land on conifer trees and even mulch that people have and those are the things that can ignite.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In Hinton, a town an hour\u2019s drive east of Jasper, they are building a five-kilometre firebreak around the community after the Jasper fire and a 2023 fire in nearby Edson that led to evacuations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe (Jasper, Hinton and Edson) are kind of the three sisters \u2014 and Hinton is the one in the middle that hasn\u2019t (been hit by fire),\u201d said Mayor Brian Laberge.<\/p>\n

Laberge said the fireguards are not smooth process, especially when it comes to removing beloved groves.<\/p>\n

\u201cLandowners are going, \u2018What the heck, I love my trees,’\u201d he said. \u201cYou go to these guys who are living on an acreage, and now the government\u2019s going to come and saw down all their trees?\u201d<\/p>\n

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Wildfire expert Jed Kaplan said hotter summers, longer dry periods and warm winters due to climate change are making wildfires a constant risk, prompting steps to reduce the damage where possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mountain towns say between Calgary and Vancouver, those are the areas where I do think there are some concrete interventions that can be made,\u201d said Kaplan, with the University of Calgary.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to cross our fingers that a lot of these treatments can be completed before there is a big fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alberta Forestry Minister Todd Loewen said crews have already responded to 27 new wildfires this year.<\/p>\n

In a statement, he said the big change needs to come with awareness as an estimated 60 per cent of wildfires are caused by human activity and the rest by lightning.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven small changes in behaviour can make a big difference,\u201d Loewen said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 The Canadian Press\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite spring snow still dusting parts of Alberta, it\u2019s now officially wildfire season, and with it comes once…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[5967,49,48,295,66,6090],"class_list":["post-523421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-alberta-wildfires","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}