About 4,700 residents of the Alberta mountain town of Jasper and visitors to Jasper National Park have been forced to evacuate after a wildfire roared into the area late Monday night.
People were forced to flee west into British Columbia with little notice over mountain roads through darkness, soot and ash.
Photos and video shared on social media depicted a long line of cars and trucks, headlights on, red tail lights blinking, heading out bumper-to bumper as the deep blue night sky darkened.
“It’s wall-to-wall traffic,” said Edmonton resident Carolyn Campbell in a phone interview from her vehicle.
“It [the smoke] is pretty thick. We’ve got masks in the car.”
Campbell said it took hours to move just seven kilometres. She said they had enough gas but worried for others who fled with little in the tank.
The Jasper townsite — and the park’s main east-west artery Highway 16 — were caught in a fiery pincer. Fires threatening from the northeast cut off highway access east to Edmonton.
Another fire roaring up from the south forced the closure of the north-south Icefields Parkway.
That left one route open — west to B.C.
The fire came with little notice, sending park and town officials scrambling to clear up traffic gridlock, find fuel for vehicles and help vulnerable people get to safety while also marshalling resources to battle the fires.
The evacuation alert was sent just after 10 p.m. MT. The Municipality of Jasper declared a state of emergency shortly after.
Alberta Emergency Alert initially said residents had to flee because the fire was five hours from the Jasper townsite, but an hour later corrected that to say people had five hours to get out — meaning they had to be out by 3 a.m. MT Tuesday.
Just after 2:30 a.m. local time, Alberta Emergency Alert issued a notice saying “the evacuation is progressing well.”
The majority of traffic is being directed west on Highway 16, and only when roadside fire conditions permit will small groups of escorted vehicles be directed east on Highway 16, the alert said.
Stephanie Goertz, who was visiting on a family vacation from Ontario, woke to the alert on her phone. She and her husband scrambled to wake their two young children and pack their belongings.
Stephanie Goertz and her…
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