City famous for royals and Hollywood guests ravaged by wildfires

“The nature of this fire was such that it humbled the people on the ground,” Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland told reporters in Hinton, Alberta, on Friday, adding that he believed nothing could have stopped the devastation and that all necessary preparations had been made.

“We want to be in the mountains,” he said. “We want to be in nature. And that means our community is exposed to the threat of wildfires. There are a lot of forested communities in Alberta that are exposed.”

The cause of the forest fires is still unclear.

In the sprawling mountain park, which draws about 2.5 million visitors a year, the fire has burned more than 140 square miles, Parks Canada said. About 20,000 park visitors and 5,000 Jasper residents were evacuated Monday night as ash began raining down on the town ahead of the flames.

A team of researchers said last year that climate change has increased the risk of major wildfires in Canada, where the fire season typically runs from March to October. Earlier this year, Canadian wildfires also prompted air quality warnings in states including Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Before returning Friday for a tour of the city, where the fire was still burning, Ireland had said he was “prepared for the worst.” During the tour, the mayor found his own home a charred ruin.

Yet there were also some sparks of positive news on Friday.

Wildfire fighters from South Africa, Australia and New Zealand are expected to arrive this weekend to help battle the 577 active fires in Alberta and neighbouring British Columbia. They will join teams flown in from other parts of Canada, which have seen relatively few wildfires this summer.

Canadian National Railway resumed freight train service through Jasper on Friday, reopening an economically important corridor between the Pacific coast and the rest of North America.

Officials said rain and cooler temperatures had allowed 158 firefighters who remained in Jasper to stop the fire’s advance, though no one had a word on when it might be under control there (warm, dry weather is expected to return over the weekend). And all of the city’s water treatment plants, schools, hospital and other critical infrastructure had been saved, Parks Canada said.

“It’s a better day,” the mayor said. “I don’t want to say a better day, because I want it to be dark and thunder and lightning and rain like crazy.”

The hardest-hit areas are largely residential on the west and south sides of the city, the parks agency said. No one has died or been seriously injured in the fires.

Ireland warned that when residents return – officials say it will take several weeks – they could find that even if their homes or businesses were not affected by the fire, they could still have suffered serious damage from smoke or water.

“It’s going to be hard,” he said of the day the city would reopen to its citizens. “The pain that will be felt almost defies description. It’s incomprehensible.”

Jeff Morris, a driver and guide for a tour company in Jasper, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., Canada’s public broadcaster, that social media posts suggested his home had been saved while the rest of his neighborhood was destroyed.

It almost seems like an “apocalyptic nightmare,” he told the announcer, adding that he was already preparing to help neighbors sort through the remains of their homes. “I will help, wherever, wherever my hands are needed. We will put the city back in order.”