BANFF – As an out-of-control wildfire forced evacuation of the Jasper townsite and ripped through the national park community burning buildings to the ground, a prominent wildfire expert has called for the dismantling of Banff’s downtown pedestrian zone amid fears it would impede evacuation should a wildfire threaten Banff this summer.
Long-time Banff resident Marie-Pierre Rogeau, a scientist with 33 years of experience in fire behaviour and fire ecology research, said what took place overnight with the wildfires and short-notice evacuation on Monday (July 22) in Jasper – which was followed by the destruction of hotels, homes and businesses as fire ripped through the community on Wednesday night (July 24) – exemplifies once again how volatile fire conditions have become in recent years.
She said new blazes, whether from dry lightning, arson or illegal campfires in forested areas, cannot be promptly detected when valleys are blanketed with smoke, and fires now burn actively at night when they cannot be fought by air make matters even worse.
“It is a good reminder that evacuations will not necessarily be based on the best case or most probable scenario: i.e. a single fire coming from the west,” Rogeau said.
“The pedestrian zone needs to be dismantled now and not at the last minute with a plow to push infrastructure on sidewalks to expedite a rushed evacuation.”
Like much of Alberta, the Bow Valley has been baking and sweltering for almost two weeks in scorching 30 Celsius plus temperatures and little rain, pushing the fire danger rating to extreme.
Rogeau has been raising concerns about Banff's evacuation plans for more than a year since a Parks Canada prescribed fire got out of control just outside the Banff townsite in May 2023.
She said what is happening in Jasper – where between 20,000 and 25,000 people were forced to flee as out-of-control fires approached from the south and the north – could have easily taken place in Banff, but with two to three times the number of people to evacuate.
“Residents and visitors may not have the luxury of multiple hours to evacuate,” said Rogeau, who has completed several fire history and fire regime studies in the Rocky Mountains and foothills landscapes of Alberta and B.C., as well as the boreal in Saskatchewan, NWT, Ontario and Quebec.
“I find it mind-boggling that officials chose to close Banff Avenue, our main evacuation artery, jeopardizing evacuation success and risking fatalities of people trapped on the other side of the river due to gridlock conditions.”
A fire did start just north of the Banff townsite at Johnson Lake day-use area on Sunday (July 21). Believed to have been caused by an illegal campfire along the Johnson Lake shoreline trail, it was quickly snuffed out by initial attack crews before it could grow in the extremely dangerous fire conditions.
Rogeau said she found it eerie around 6-7 p.m. Monday when the Bow Valley, already thick with smoke, darkened even more and the wind picked up indicating a storm passing through.
“A fire having started in the Spray Valley could have gone undetected long enough for it to gain momentum and be near our doorstep triggering a last-minute evacuation,” she said.
In Jasper, the roughly 4,700 residents and thousands and thousands of tourists were given very short notice to flee the town at 10 p.m. on Monday night. RCMP were going door-to-door making sure all residents had left, while all seniors’ living facilities and patients at the Jasper hospital had been evacuated to Hinton. Parks started evacuating backcountry campers by helicopter.
Earlier Monday evening, at about 7:30 p.m., Parks Canada issued an alert that fire crews and Jasper's fire department were responding to a wildfire near the transfer station, about nine kilometres northeast of the townsite. Fire crews were also responding to multiple wildfires, including one south of the townsite that was proving to be "evolving and dynamic situation." A preventative evacuation notice was issued at about 9 p.m..
However, the raging wildfires blocked evacuation access south of the townsite along the Icefields Parkway and to north on Highway 16 towards Hinton.
That left only one heavily clogged route out of Jasper to the west along Highway 16 into British Columbia. Photos showed bumper-to-bumper vehicles inching out of town and along Highway 16 amid darkness, ash and heavy smoke.
Banff Mayor Corrie DiManno said the Town of Banff commends Jasper National Park for the safe evacuation of residents and visitors and "we continue to be in awe of the first responders."
"There are no words, only tears. Banff’s heart is broken watching the devastation in our sister community," she said.
Following the evacuation of residents on Monday and into Tuesday, DiManno said it’s not too much of a leap to imagine a similar situation happening in Banff.
“When we enter the summer season and the smoke comes in from other communities that are currently battling wildfires, the anxiety levels in town go up,” she said.
“When you see your sister community going through the danger of wildfire, it becomes that much more real for us.”
That said, DiManno noted she has the utmost confidence in the Town of Banff administration and the municipality’s emergency and evacuation plans.
“We were shown some modelling earlier this year as it relates to evacuating the south side,” she said.
“Those plans were considered advanced and that we could evacuate that whole area of town in the time it takes to drive to Calgary and back.”
While wildfire smoke is blanketing the skies above Banff from wildfires in B.C. and Alberta, there are currently no fires close to the community.
Katherine Severson, director of emergency and protective services for the Town of Banff, said the municipality has a robust evacuation plan for all types of hazards and for all times of year that considers the unique geographical and infrastructure challenges within the community.
“There is no secret that the Town does consider our entire roadway network and the challenges that it poses, but within that complex series of variables are included things like the time of year, the time of day that an evacuation might be required and the hazard that’s necessitating it,” she said.
“At the end of the day, we look at all of those variables within our infrastructure and look at how we can plan to mitigate them and the evacuation plan considers all the features in our roadway network and that’s what we plan for.”
The traffic management plan guides how the Town of Banff would work through the challenges associated with the bottleneck at the Bow River Bridge and the entire roadway network, which includes the car-free pedestrian zone on the 100 and 200 blocks of Banff Avenue should disaster strike,Severson said
There are also restrictions with having only two exits out of the townsite onto the Trans-Canada Highway, which is also the only way to get east or west of the Banff townsite, she said.
“It’s not any one roadway that we look at; we have to consider that any of them could be threatened in the context of a wildfire or any other incident,” she said.
“The pedestrian zone is not weighing in higher or lower than any of the other variables. We have to prepare for all of these variables that are challenges for us.”
Severson called on all residents to sign up for both the Alberta emergency alert system as well as the Voyent Alert mass notification system used by the Town of Banff at https://banff.ca/alert.
“That’s how we’re going to notify residents of an evacuation,” she said.
The Town of Banff also has a dedicated webpage on emergency preparedness and evacuation found at https://banff.ca/emergency.
“I want everyone to seek out the Town of Banff evacuation guide and that includes everything on the website about personal preparedness and an evacuation checklist,” Severson said.
Banff fire chief Russ Geyer said the fire department is always training in preparation for an emergency.
“It was in the spring of this year that we were doing wildfire training in the snow, so we start early and practice and review,” he said.
The fire chief called on residents to FireSmart their homes, including raking up dry leaves and needles.
“If something ever would happen here, then we’re one step closer and there’s less work for the fire service to do when it’s just the situation like Jasper when people have to leave on a short notice,” Geyer said.
