The Canadian Red Cross is promising to keep helping Jasper for the foreseeable future as the community continues to recover from last summer’s wildfire.
This ongoing support includes case management, mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) and grants to community organizations.
“We plan to stay in community for probably several years, and we’ve always worked at the pace of the community’s recovery,” said Emily Pietropaolo, vice president of recovery with the Canadian Red Cross. “So, we are not going anywhere, and we definitely plan to stay in community as long as we’re needed.”
The Red Cross has been active in Jasper since the wildfire broke out last summer. It first launched the Humanitarian Services Centre in Hinton for displaced Jasperites in early August before opening a support centre in Jasper itself to help residents re-entering town following the evacuation.
The Red Cross also provided more than $3 million in financial assistance to more than 4,000 households as of Oct. 31 and offered in-person support in Edmonton, Calgary and Valemount, B.C.
“That was some of the stuff we did in the early days, and then we shifted into recovery fairly early, just sort of post re-entry, recognizing the community had, for the most part, returned home, and then we started to kind of launch our different recovery programs,” Pietropaolo said.
Canadian Red Cross President Conrad Sauve was in Jasper last weekend, where he met with Red Cross personnel and Deputy Mayor Ralph Melnyk. The Red Cross later prepared and served the last Community Dinner of the season on Sunday (March 30).
Because the Red Cross typically only has two case managers at the Community Outreach Services office each week, the Red Cross also brought in a few more case managers who met with more than 60 people between Thursday (March 27) and Saturday (March 29).
Pietropaolo described the case management as “personalized” to best support individuals and households who have been impacted. This support can be financial assistance, help with recovery planning, outlining the next steps for rebuilding or simply having someone to talk with.
“All of our case management team can provide that support,” Pietropaolo said. “We actually did see a lot of people coming in last week just wanting to really talk to someone and sort of do it almost like a check in, just to say how they’re doing, how they’re progressing and we’re always here to listen and provide support where we can.”
Through community grants, the Red Cross supports community organizations. It helped the Municipality of Jasper purchase a trailer to house the food bank and funded all 13 community dinners this season.
“From our perspective, I think we can see the impact of the programs that we’re providing, and it seems like they are helpful to community members, to small businesses and to not-for-profits,” Pietropaolo said. “So, we’re happy to continue to provide programming where we can and provide that support.”
