a new book looks at the lessons learned from the 2024 Jasper wildfire

The wildfires in Southern California will look familiar to anyone who saw the devastation in Fort McMurray in 2016, Lytton in 2021, or Jasper just last year. But the author of a new book says, at least in the case of Jasper, much of that damage could have been avoided.

“I was approached by publisher Ken Whyte right after the fires,” said journalist Matthew Scace, author of Jasper on Fire: Five Days of Hell in a Rocky Mountain Paradise.

“I had been reporting on them for the Calgary Herald and he asked if I wanted to write the book. And that’s how it all started.”

“I really wanted to put it all together, understand why it happened, what led to this happening, and also just the stories of people involved.”

“What were people like? What was it like to evacuate Jasper? What was it like to try to save the town? What was it like coming back for the first time after being away for two weeks? That’s what I was trying to do with this book.”

For many in Jasper, Scace found it wasn’t a matter of if a wildfire would devastate the community, but when.

“Somewhere along the way, fire became viewed as sort of an evil, generally speaking. It’s not great for tourism, it’s not something people want to see,” Scace said.

He says the effect of that was a neglect in forest management, namely controlled burns. Coupled with a mandate to build homes with cedar shakes and siding, you have a disaster waiting to happen. The wildfire would end up burning down one-third of the structures in the community.

“For decades, when Jasper was becoming a tourist town, it was encouraged that they use certain materials, like cedar shake roofs, a deadly material for wildfires.”

While Jasper and LA County couldn’t be further apart, Scace notes they have some things in common.

“In California, I saw buildings that looked exactly like those in Jasper, where they have wood sidings or wood roofs.”

“One thing I was really curious about is how similar these fires were. [There are] different landscapes and different triggers and different types of brush or forest that start these fires, but when you put them over top of each other, they look quite similar.”

He says while wildfires aren’t 100 per cent preventable, there are things we can do to minimize the damage – what he calls the unglamourous work of fire-smarting our homes.

“It’s cleaning up brush around your house, making sure your materials are up to code or fine if an ember hits your roof. That’s one of the big things, especially for people living in those areas where it is becoming much more realistic that a fire could hit their community.”

As for current rebuilding efforts in Jasper, Scace says it’s been a slow, painful, and, at times, contentious process.

“There are people who have moved back. There are people who probably will never come back because they don’t want to go through the process. It’s challenging to go through insurance. They just want to maybe take the money, if they can get it, and go set up somewhere else, because there is a reality that Jasper could experience this again.”

Scace points to the jurisdictional wrangling between the province of Alberta, Parks Canada, which controls Jasper National Park, and the municipality itself.

“It’s very unique. And there are very few places like that in Canada.”

As urban wildfires become more common because of climate change, Scace hopes the reader comes away with a greater awareness that this could happen to them too.

“I do hope that there is increased awareness of what this experience is like and how devastating it can be, because I don’t think we know what it’s going to be like until it hits us.”

Jasper on Fire: Five Days of Hell in a Rocky Mountain Paradise is published by Sutherland House.