Emergency officials are expected to bring in members of the media Sunday afternoon for the first tour of the townsite inside Jasper National Park since it was ravaged by a wildfire, with the tour to give a closer look at the extent of the damage.
Reporters will journey through the community and view both critical infrastructure that remains intact, as well as being able to see the structures destroyed by the flames.
The tour comes a day after the municipality of Jasper released a high-resolution map and list of properties showing which structures had been destroyed since the fire entered the townsite. Single-family homes, apartments, a hostel, a senior’s manor and a church were among the buildings destroyed.
Approximately 30 per cent of the buildings in Jasper are estimated to have been damaged by the wildfires, amounting to 358 of the town’s 1,113 structures destroyed.
“Most structures were destroyed and very few were damaged,” Christine Nadon, incident commander for the Municipality of Jasper, said in an update alongside Parks Canada officials on Saturday.
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As of Saturday evening, the wildfire remained out of control with expectations it could become more active in the coming days with warmer weather forecasted.
“Currently we are going to be working on this wildfire we expect over the next three months at least,” Landon Shephard, deputy incident commander with Parks Canada, said Saturday. “We are gearing up for a long struggle.
Nadon added that it had become an all-or-nothing situation as buildings were either not affected at all or completely razed to the ground.
Nearly an entire block of homes could be levelled to the ground but in some cases a single house remained standing, the newly released map showed.
The map only showed those buildings in the townsite, but many of the resorts south of Jasper along Highway 93 were not captured, but saw extensive damage.
Alpine Village said it lost half its 54 cabins, while Tekarra Lodge lost several buildings — their front office, the main building with the restaurant, and several cabins — but didn’t have hard numbers. Becker’s Chalets also lost five buildings.
Nadon said the toll is still being calculated in terms of how much of the residential population has been impacted compared to the number of buildings destroyed.
Critical infrastructure remained intact, including schools, the hospital, and water treatment services, but Premier Danielle Smith said on Saturday that staff needed to get inside the hospital to check for damage since there were reports its roof had been on fire.
The town cautioned the information on the losses is still preliminary and is based on the damage that is visible from the street.
—with files from Global News’ Karen Bartko and Jayme Doll
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