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Monday July 22 was another hot day.
The day before was even hotter: at 38 degrees Celsius (100 F) Jasper was the hottest place in Alberta—excluding my apartment! (The zone valve on the register was stuck open so I couldn’t turn the heat off. Like a lobster I was being boiled alive.)
The heat wave had begun two weeks before. Temperatures in the thirties. The moss in the forest crunched when you stepped on it, and there was no danger of getting a wet backside when you sat on it. Green trees were panting volatile oils. Pine-beetle trees were making ominous clicking sounds in the hot wind coming up from the south as their dead branches touched. It was a tinderbox. The forest was about to explode—and everyone knew.
It was 34 degrees Celsius at 3 p.m. that Monday, and like the other heat-wave days I had spent the afternoon sitting under a tree at the Marmot Lodge. I had watched helicopters with dangling 700-gallon buckets coming and going—where, I didn’t know. But it didn’t look good.
I don’t have a cell phone, just a land line and it’s rarely plugged in. My son Liam was going to phone at 9 p.m. to see how I was making out in the heatwave, and check whether the two fans he was sending had arrived. At 8:45 p.m. the phone rang. It was Liam, 15 minutes early.
“Dad! There’s an evacuation alert!”
“There is?” They don’t send alerts to old house phones. He said I had better see what was going on.
I walked over to the Forest Park Hotel. Ash was falling but not much. Tourists were wondering what to do, some already walking suitcases in the general direction of the parking lot.
At 10 p.m. Liam phoned back.
“Dad! There’s an evacuation order. You’ve got to leave NOW.”
“Well I’m not going.”
“DAD! Don’t be stupid.”
“I’m staying, Liam. I’m going to watch my 78 years burning up. If it gets real bad I’m going to head to the railway tracks, crawl under a grain car.”
“DAD! THAT’S REALLY STUPID. The fire is going to be there in five hours.” That was one of the statements they put out. Later they corrected it to, You have five hours to obey the evacuation order.
Buses were leaving from the Forest Park Hotel, he said, taking those without vehicles to Valemount. I certainly wouldn’t be taking my car (it’s only firing on three cylinders, like the owner). To calm my nervous son I said I’d wander over to the hotel to check on bus times and phone him back. When I did he demanded that I promise to get on the bus and stop being stupid about staying. I muttered my way out of that one and said I would phone him later from Valemount.
Around 3 a.m. Tuesday I went and waved the last bus off from where I was hiding in the bushes. There were so many vehicles leaving town all at once it took from two to three hours just to drive to the highway. Later in the night they let some vehicles go east to Hinton.
Two fires threatening the town: the south one on the Icefields Parkway about 18 km away, and the other just 5 km east at the Transfer Station.
I went out several times in the night to see what was happening. When a vehicle came down the road I hid. I wasn’t sure if I’d be arrested for not observing the evacuation order. The least they would do is give me a lecture about endangering first responders if they have to rescue a pathetic old man lugging a suitcase to the highway.
At 7 a.m. I rode my bike on the trail behind the cemetery to the Maligne bridge. I wanted to see if you could still drive east to Hinton; also, it would give me a view of the south fire. I watched a dozen horse trailers speeding towards town. Was there a rodeo some place? Later I learned they had come to rescue horses from the stables.
There are over 200 units at Cavell Apartments; as far as I know just three of us stayed. Andy, my next-door neighbour, and CNer Eddie two floors below. I now had two getaway rides, if it came to that. For two days we watched the fires.
I rode around town on Tuesday morning. There was hardly anyone about. At noon I went in Eddie’s pickup truck to Pyramid lake, and we walked a ways up the fire road. Ahead, we saw the smoke cloud from the Transfer Station fire changing colour as another stand of trees went up.
Early evening I watched the fire burning up drainages off the Skyline trail. I couldn’t believe how fast the flames were travelling. One moment they were in the valley, the next they had reached the alpine. And those flames were BIG, even seen from town.
There was too much smoke to tell what was happening on the west side of the Athabasca River. Maybe the fire would stay on the east side of the river, swing around the slopes of Mount Tekarra to the Maligne valley and miss the town?
I talked to a helicopter pilot who had flown up that morning from Lake Louise. He said that when he first came up there were two fires in the valley but they had now become one. There was too much smoke to bucket the fire, and anyway bucketing this monster would be equivalent to spitting on a campfire to put it out. He reckoned the only possible thing that might work was to backburn, but he doubted that that was even possible. There was too much fuel ahead of the fire, and anyway it was too late.
Just before dark Eddie and I drove up Pyramid road for a look back at the town. I got a shock. I now saw flames in the valley—the fire was heading straight for town, not just going around Mount Tekarra. The die was cast; but it had been since the forest turned red.
We drove by Cabin Creek and Stone Mountain. The Sprinkler Protection Unit had set up a sprinkler just before Stone Mountain and had pulled stuff off balconies and around buildings and set it on the curb. There was no ash falling, no smoke, no wind, no noise, no people—it was as if the Bomb had gone off and only us were left.
When we got back to Cavell parking lot I heard a faint scratching-on-metal noise. It was the raven pair, roosting on the horizontal drainpipe under the soffit. They have never done this in summer, only in winter. Did they know something?
I woke up around 2 a.m. Wednesday and smelled smoke. I felt uneasy. I went outside to check. I walked to the railway. There was a big glow in the sky to the north-east. In the south I couldn’t see much.
Around 10 a.m. Wednesday I walked up Bear Hill to see what was happening. There was a lot of smoke to the south and I couldn’t see what that fire was doing. Looking down at the town there was not a vehicle at the Forest Park Hotel, nothing on the roads. Jasper was a ghost town. It was quieter than when the pandemic hit. Back then everyone was inside: now everyone was gone!
I went up Bear Hill again at 3 p.m. I couldn’t believe what I saw! A pyrocumulonimbus cloud looming over the town like some monstrous, hideous ogre. Flames roaring up Portal Creek, Whistlers Creek. A brilliant light behind the slopes of Mount Tekarra as if the sun had tumbled down. It was a wildfire gone wild, no stopping it, and with all the fuel in the world to keep going. It made my knees knock.
I went back to the apartment, phoned Andy, phoned Liam. I had been making bread and I told Liam I had just put the loaves in the oven and would probably be leaving within the hour. Liam shouted down the phone: “ARE YOU RAVING MAD DAD?! YOU’VE GOT TO LEAVE NOW!” My son-in-law in Reno phoned and said the same thing. So did Andy when I said I’d be ready in about an hour.
I took the sourdough loaves out of the oven and stuck them in the freezer.
Closing the door and turning the key was one of the hardest things I have ever done. There was 78 years of my life in there. Unlike ones who had left on the Monday thinking they would be back in a few days—like those Titanic passengers chivvied on deck when the iceberg first struck yet expecting to be back in warm cabins withing the hour—I knew otherwise. For I had seen the MONSTER. I never expected to see my home again.
We drove away as the fire reached the outskirts of town. The south fire had travelled 5 km in 30 minutes.
I came out with one suitcase, a couple of shopping bags, my climbing boots and backpack, which I had packed the day before the evacuation order for a five-night trip to my Secret Valley on Tuesday!
Three weeks later I took the loaves out of the fridge and stuck them in the oven. They turned out not too bad—despite everything.
David Harrap // info@thejasperlocal.com
