Critical infrastructure online, power outages becoming less drawn-out
Jasper’s power situation is precarious, there is a wildfire on the landscape 15 kms northeast of town and representatives from the municipality and the national park are telling visitors that now is not the time to visit Jasper. However, officials are not planning on declaring a state of local emergency (SOLE) and so long as the municipality has control of its critical infrastructure, that situation won’t change.
“It’s a serious situation but we’re not considering declaring a SOLE at this time,” said Christine Nadon, who is the director of the local Emergency Coordination Centre (ECC). “We’re not considering evacuation.”
On September 4, a wildfire, ignited by lightning strike high on Chetamon mountain, grew exponentially in size and knocked out the community’s power transmission lines. Since Monday, power has been restored to Jasper’s critical infrastructure, but much of the residential grid has been without electricity. Some Jasperites, specifically residents on the 600 block of Connaught Drive who live in an area with a high number of commercial properties and therefore would be too-large of draw on the system if re-energized, have been without power since the beginning of the ordeal.
“Depending on the neighbourhood, some people were without power for more than 60 hours,” Nadon said.
Still, between ATCO’s generators, the municipality’s back-up power systems and private generators—powering both commercial businesses and residences—Nadon and members of the EAC are confident most Jasperites can stay in their homes.
“Managing water and our sewers, we can live without power,” Nadon said, adding “we’re hoping the power situation stabilizes.”
It has. Drawn-out outages have decreased in the last 24 hours, replaced by intermittent interruptions.
“We’re seeing some bumps in power but ATCO is managing to bring us back online within a couple of hours,” Nadon said.
Declaring a state of emergency—a process authorized by provincial legislation and enacted by the town’s Emergency Advisory Committee—would only be considered if members of the EAC (which is chaired by the mayor) determined that local authorities required additional, special powers to manage the emergency. Such additional powers could include: controlling the distribution of essential supplies such as food and fuel; demanding residents leave their homes; and authorization to enter property, for example. Jasper’s situation is pressing, but not requiring of such extreme measures, Nadon said.
“I understand folks are anxious, they’re looking for action from emergency response teams…but we don’t need to declare a state of emergency.”
Emergency officials are in close contact with Alberta’s Emergency Management Agency. There is always the option of tapping the province for essentials such as food, personnel and other resources, but Nadon said between the ECC, the municipality, the Parks Canada agency and ATCO, those measures aren’t required in Jasper at this time.
“We’re working on short-and-mid-term contingency plans to ensure essential services are available and our seniors are looked after,” she said.
While fuel was unavailable for a time yesterday (September 7), since then, authorities have worked to adjust the critical infrastructure electricity grid to ensure at least one gas station is always online. Similarly, the EAC is liaising with local food suppliers to ensure potential gaps in the supply chain are filled.
“We’re working with the grocery stores,” Nadon said.
Just because a state of local emergency isn’t being declared at this time doesn’t mean that residents should go back to life as usual, however. Richard Ireland spoke to the need to reduce electricity demand at today’s media briefing.
“We’re asking people to voluntarily conserve energy to reduce demand,” Ireland said. “We want to keep our community open, to at least our residents.”
Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com
