The B.C. towns that jumped to help Jasper fire evacuees

Small-town B.C. has a reputation for being friendly and full of culture, but on Monday evening they showed just how quickly they can jump into action when there's a crisis in another province.

Monday night, residents and tourists in the town of Jasper and the national park received urgent emergency text messages telling them to leave immediately as an aggressive wildfire was threatening the community. Social media was soon flooded with videos of hours-long vehicle backups and profanity-punctuated images of flames licking the road.

Many of them sought solace in Valemount, a tiny village of just a thousand people 120 kilometres away, plunging the community into a crisis.

“We probably had three or four thousand people here,” said Mayor Owen Torgensen, describing the entire community as jumping into action. “We have our emergency operations centre activated, we've got volunteers.”

Those who continued driving on to Clearwater found the tourist season in full swing and few hotel accommodations, prompting some to sleep in their cars when they pulled over in exhaustion.

“It's sort of organically happening around town, people sort of running into people sleeping in cars and things like that, asking 'Do you need a hand?'” said Mayor Merlin Blackwell.

He described the town as being well-stocked with supplies at the grocery store, service stations, and local restaurants, but revealed a new fire has started just north of the community during the lunch hour Tuesday, adding a new level of stress.

“The only safe direction for (Jasper) evacuees was to go west along Highway 16 into British Columbia,” said Emergency Management Minister Bowen Ma, explaining why they didn’t go to Alberta. “British Columbians will always do everything that we can to help our neighbours in crisis, but we are also facing some very challenging circumstances.”

That has the province urging displaced Albertans to head back across the provincial border to evacuation centres set up in various communities there. 

“British Columbia has been very gracious in facilitating the movement of Albertans through their province and actually helping us with a collection point in Valemount, but they have no capacity to house Albertans, especially given the number (of B.C. evacuees),” said Steven Lacroix, with the Alberta Emergency Management Agency.

Premier David Eby lauded the rural communities that jumped into action late at night on short notice to support Jasper evacuees.

“We have leaned on Alberta before, we have leaned on Ontario, on Newfoundland, on other provinces as well as other jurisdictions,” he told reporters in Comox. “It was our chance to pay that back last night.”