A team of Grande Prairie Fire Department firefighters have arrived in Jasper to assist the inter-agency firefighting operations in bringing the blaze ravaging the townsite under control.
As of 11:45 p.m. on July 24th, the GPFD deployed three emergency response vehicles and seven firefighters to assist the Town of Jasper. Grande Prairie Fire Marshall and Acting Fire Chief for the GPFD Chris Renyk says the decision comes due to the simple fact that the municipality is in need.
“Wildfire is a prominent risk in present days, across the province, across Canada, and any neighbouring jurisdictions or municipalities, we try to assist, it’s what we do,” he says. “In recent years it’s been very taxing for Alberta Wildfire, so a lot of municipalities have collectively come together.”
“We are in a good distance to be able to provide resources, and adequately as well.”
Renyk says decisions like deploying resources to communities outside of Grande Prairie are not taken lightly, and the choice in this case was only made after a thorough analysis of the availability.
“When the request goes out, generally, from across the region, and into neighbouring provinces, we take a look and evaluate what we have for the capacity to provide resources, especially in the early, initial onset of any kind of incident,” he says. “Right now in the municipality of Grande Prairie, we have favourable conditions for the short term where we’ve got some rain which increases our relative humidity, drastically reducing our wildfire risk at least for the short term.”
The Fire Marshall suggests that the process now is the coordination of the amount of resources available in Jasper. He adds that due to the sensitivity of the subject, specific operational updates are unavailable at this time in the interest of avoiding false information spreading as the situation is constantly changing.
“We are directly involved as a dispatched resource, I can confirm that, and the guys are working extensively and they are going to be deployed for quite a few hours over quite a few days, and we hope that the inter-agency cooperation works out well,” he says.
According to the most recent update, the fire is estimated to be around 36,000 hectares in size, and some homes and businesses in Jasper have been lost as a result.
