Jasper residents will soon get bus tours of destroyed properties

Jasper residents will soon get a chance to see their properties that were destroyed in last week's wildfire.

The Municipality of Jasper and Parks Canada, the bodies leading the unified command for the fire, approved the plan Thursday. The buses will be organized by the government of Alberta.

Richard Ireland, mayor of the town of Jasper, said any access will depend on fire activity in the coming days as temperatures begin to rise.

"It is jarring but it is also part of the healing journey that we will all have to go through," Ireland said at a joint federal, provincial and municipal news conference in Hinton Thursday.

"So we are working on that, recognizing that there is still fire on the landscape."

Jason Nixon, Alberta's minister of Seniors, Community and Social Services, said that residents need to get that access as soon as possible.

"What we learned with both Slave Lake and Fort McMurray that the quicker that we can get individuals home to be able to see what has taken place with their property, the quicker we can start things like insurance and other critical components to really rebuildthe town," he said.

Ireland and Nixon were joined at Thursday's news conference by federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault, Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages Minister Randy Boissonnault and provincial Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen.

The media has been taken on supervised tours of the Jasper townsite. On Thursday, transport trucks were allowed on Highway 16 through the park in limited time blocks. But residents have not been able to return to see what's left of their homes and have relied on videos and photographs.

Thirty per cent of structures within the town were destroyed by the fire. Ireland said that doesn't account for the number of residents facing losses as some of these buildings had multiple units.

"The real human impact of this is not just the structures and the structures are not representative of the number of people that have been directly impacted by loss of properties," he said.

Seniors moving back to Alberta

Nixon provided an update about seniors' residences within Jasper. Eighteen seniors who were in the continuing care facility attached to the Jasper Healthcare Centre have been moved to Hinton.

The facility operated by the Evergreen Foundation was destroyed by fire. Of the 32 residents, 17 are with family. The remaining 15 are in hotels in Valemount, B.C. Nixon said the province plans to move that last group into hotels in Hinton on Friday.

The Alpine Summit Lodge is still intact. The province hopes to get into the building soon to look for possible smoke damage.

Campers who were forced to leave their recreation vehicles behind when they fled the fires last week are frustrated with the lack of information about possible damage and a time to retrieve their property.

Ireland acknowledged their concerns but said it still isn't safe for people to retrieve their property. He said the incident command centre is working on a plan.

Dean MacDonald, one of the incident commanders with Parks Canada, said they are considering a plan where RVs and other camp equipment can be taken to a centralized location outside the park.

Red Cross in Hinton

The fire, which started about 10 days ago, is 32,500 hectaresand still classified as out of control.

In an update to Facebook earlier on Thursday, Parks Canada said the Red Cross was planning to set up a reception area in Hinton.

Atcohas restored electricity to the downtown core of the Jasper townsite. Crews are starting to remove debris from the area.

Ignition fire specialists were expected to set controlled fires in the Pyramid Lake area north of town on Thursday to destroy trees and other forest material that could fuel fire in the area between the control line and the perimeter of the fire.

Crews took similar action on Wednesday near the Kerkeslin campground along the Icefields Parkway.

The Facebook update said crews are also working on an underground fire near Jasper's wastewater and water treatment site.

WATCH | Through the lens: A week since the start of the Jasper wildfire:

Through the lens: A week since the start of the Jasper wildfire

15 days ago

Duration 44:25

In the week since Jasper National Park's residents and visitors were ordered to flee as wildfires approached, hours of video footage have emerged chronicling the evacuation, the firefight and the first glimpses of the ravaged town, where about 30 per cent of the structures were destroyed. This compilation brings together videos gathered by our crews or verified by our journalists.