User Story: The 2024 Jasper National Park Wildfires

Devastating wildfires impacted Jasper National Park in Alberta in late July. The fires led to the evacuation of as many as 25,000 people, the closure of the entire national park, and significant destruction in the Town of Jasper. As I write this, these fires are still out of control, and residents are still waiting to return to their community.

This year’s wildfires will forever change the town of Jasper and its residents, as well as Jasper National Park and its 2.5 million visitors annually.

Jasper National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, features shimmering glaciers, abundant wildlife, crystal-clear lakes, deep canyons, and thundering waterfalls surrounded by mountains. At 11,228 square kilometres, it is Canada's largest park in the Rocky Mountains and the world's second-largest Dark Sky Preserve.

The Evacuation

On Monday, July 22, 2024, a busy wildfire season in Western Canada took a dramatic turn for thousands of Jasper, Alberta residents and nearly twenty thousand visitors to the Town of Jasper and Jasper National Park. Fires raged north and south of the area, reaching within 12 kilometres of the townsite when the Town of Jasper and Parks Canada decided to evacuate up to twenty-five thousand residents and visitors.

Emergency managers decided to declare a mandatory evacuation on Monday evening because the fires were “exhibiting aggressive, aggressive fire behaviour," according to the Parks Canada Incident Commander, Katie Ellsworth. Unfortunately, the rapidly evolving situation left no time to prepare the community before declaring the evacuation order for the Town of Jasper and Jasper National Park at around ten p.m.

The evacuation was communicated over the Alberta Emergency Alert network, including cellular phones in the evacuation-affected area as wireless emergency alerts.

Evacuating twenty-five thousand people from a mountain community is always challenging. The wildfires further complicated the evacuation by cutting off highway access east to Edmonton and south along the Icefields Parkway.

Backcountry and Wilderness Areas

Only a tiny fraction of the park's area is road accessible. The rest forms a large backcountry area, only accessible by an extensive trail network. Backcountry access is often accomplished by backpacking or horseback and, in rare cases, kayaking or rafting.

More than two thousand individual campsites exist in Jasper National Park, including ninety backcountry campgrounds.

Not surprisingly, much of Jasper National Park, and more importantly, the evacuated area, is outside of cellular phone service or internet connectivity, leaving many people away from the Town of Jasper and front country areas unaware of the rapidly changing conditions and mandatory evacuation.

A few reports of Jasper National Park backcountry hikers carrying a Garmin inReach, ZOLEO or other satellite communicator have emerged. Even with their satellite communicators, they only heard of the wildfires and mandatory evacuation from family and friends the following day as media reports about the grave situation developing in Jasper began circulating. Family and friends reached out to check in on them, often from thousands of kilometres away, in different time zones and with limited information. Other users learned of the wildfires and mandatory evacuation from other hikers carrying satellite communicators.

“All hikers reported missing or in distress have been accounted for, but Albertans are encouraged to contact people who may be in the mountains and unaware of the fire danger.” - Parks Canada Incident Commander.

On Tuesday morning, Parks Canada deployed specialized teams to rescue visitors from backcountry areas. A helicopter flew over backcountry trails and campgrounds, looking for visitors who needed to be warned of the emergency and be evacuated.

One example is Christine Jacques's story, reported on by CBC, Canada’s national public broadcaster. It provides an excellent account of her backcountry experience and how the conditions quickly developed on Tuesday. In this article, you can read her story: "What it's like being trapped by wildfire in Alberta's backcountry.”

A Different Experience for an Adiona Alert User

For one family in Jasper’s backcountry, the experience was significantly different. Marnie, an experienced thru-hiker, her partner, and their five-year-old were on the last night of a six-day hike of the Jonas Pass-Poboktan Creek trail.

After a challenging solo hike last summer on the Benton Mackaye trail in the Smoky Mountains, Marnie purchased a Garmin inReach Mini 2 and a subscription to Adiona Alert for this summer’s family trip. She got the Garmin inReach for severe emergencies and severe weather—“the weather is just getting more unpredictable,” she observed.

She could have never guessed how quickly her new inReach and the location-based alerts from Adiona Alert would be called into action.

Settling in for the night on Monday, Marnie noticed the winds shifting and gaining strength. The mountains in the distance were harder to see due to the increasing wildfire smoke, which had been present throughout their adventure. There was no indication of the massive wildfire growing to the north.

Shortly after 22:20 that evening, she received a notification on her Garmin inReach from Adiona Alert notifying her of the threatening wildfires and mandatory evacuation.

As the situation evolved over the next few hours, she received three additional notifications providing updates on the mandatory evacuation and developing emergency, including the recommended evacuation route, given one wildfire had closed the eastern road out of the park.

Since Adiona Alert monitors the Alberta Emergency Alert system, each alert issued for that area was immediately sent to her device, allowing her to request additional information to make informed decisions about her family’s safety.

Marnie and her partner decided to start their last day much earlier than planned. Before first light, they began packing up. “Packing up with a five-year-old takes a little longer,” she recounts. On their five-hour hike to the trailhead, they met some hikers informing them of the wildfires and evacuation – no one was aware of the emergency evacuation.

Thankfully, Marnie and her family were never in harm's way, but imagining a much more dangerous outcome is not difficult.

The location-based alerts Adiona Alert delivered directly to her inReach provided her with critical information and peace of mind.