It’s been nine days since the largest wildfire in Jasper National Park’s recorded history started by lightning in extreme conditions.

It’s been exactly a week since that fire blew up into an unstoppable inferno and 4,700 residents and another 20,000 or so visitors were forced to flee, in the middle of the night, to the safety of neighbouring communities. 

It’s been about four days since hundreds of residents received confirmation that their homes and everything in them—their clothes, their worldly possessions, their important documents and the reminders of their shared lives—have been destroyed. 

And it’s been a day since the last of the structure fires in the townsite have been extinguished. 

And now, disappointingly, but not unexpectedly, right on cue, here come the armchair experts to tell the world they knew this was coming.

As flames continue to spread out of control and hundreds of dedicated responders—many of whom lost their own homes in the fire—battle the wildfire on several dangerous fronts, a peanut gallery of online trolls are telling them they didn’t do enough to prevent it.

As dozens of critical personnel work tirelessly to secure the townsite and prepare for an eventual staged re-entry of the community’s traumatized citizens, a growing faction with apparently nothing constructive to add can’t help but hurl “I-told-you-sos” from afar.

And while the community bands together to figure out their next steps in rebuilding their lives, even some who have called Jasper home for decades bloviate insensitively about the “bigger picture” and how the fire’s destruction is in fact a beautiful renaissance.

These amateurs, voyeurs and navel gazers are effectively smothering the necessary process of grieving that Jasperites are going through and only distracting from the real, on-the-ground work that needs to be accomplished in solidarity, free from judgement.

At a July 29 briefing for reporters all across the country, some media members, under the guise of “just asking questions,” attempted to lead Parks Canada representatives down a path which would confirm the narrative they appeared so eager to write: that this once-in-a-century wildfire could have somehow been prevented by more proactive forest management; better, bigger sprinkler systems; or the razing of every beetle-killed pine in a 10,000 sq-km national park. 

Validating that hindsight would be an extremely juicy angle indeed. Papers would fly off the shelves. Website clicks would be innumerable. Advertising dollars would flow in. As a reporter, editor and publisher, I know how colossal of a story it would be if it were correct that the park and the municipality should be put on trial for not having enough foresight to prevent such a tragedy.

But it’s not correct. 

To suggest it is—willfully ignoring decades of FireSmarting work in the community; the thinning of more than 1,000 hectares of dense forest between 2003 and 2020; clearing hundreds more hectares of firebreak; tens of millions of dollars spent on prescribed burns throughout the park; and, perhaps most importantly, countless volunteer efforts to remove flammable materials from around neighbourhoods and critical infrastructure—is not just off-putting, it’s dangerously divisive.

Yes, Jasper is located in a forested, mountainous landscape. Yes, we’ve all talked about “the big one” that could come down the valley. Yes, we know that for years we’ve become increasingly vulnerable to the exact type of incident that occurred on July 24: a violent lightning storm during the heat of summer in a climate-altered environment.

But as a former fire and vegetation specialist told me on one of my first FireSmart tours in Jasper: With a 100-year history of suppressing any fire that sparked up, there’s simply no way we could ever return all of Jasper National Park’s mono-culture forests into a more fire-resistant mosaic of mixed species and ages—as they would have been when Indigenous Peoples were applying fire to the landscape for time immemorial. 

On Monday, Jasper MayorRichard Ireland pushed back against those so enthusiastic to assign blame. 

“I reject entirely any suggestion that there was a failure here. Everyone got out of town. Most of our town was spared. That could not have happened without the preparatory work done on the landscape,” said Ireland, who on Friday confirmed he lost his home of 67 years in the fire. 

He’s right. The armchair critics are wrong. So whether over beers at the local brewery, on social media, or through the platforms that some of us are privileged to have at our disposal, please: save us the hot takes and the hot air. 

It’s been nine days and we’ve had quite enough of it already.

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com