Jasper National Park will not be able to accommodate any visitors until after the Labour Day weekend at the earliest.
Parks Canada hosted a virtual Jasper Stakeholder Update on Tuesday afternoon to update stakeholders on the wildfire situation.
Liaison officer Steve Blake said Parks Canada was in the process of “converting plans to action” when it came to allowing evacuees to visit the townsite via bus tour, reopening Highway 16 for essential traffic, and aligning the requirements for re-entry into the town.
Blake noted that the Columbia Icefields area would be among the first areas to be accessible to visitors since there was no immediate fire danger that far south.
“And I'll make it pretty clear to the whole room that probably will be the extent of the visitor offering,” he said.
“When we talk about re-entry, we're definitely starting with essential workers, essential staff to start our road to recovery.”
Parks Canada doesn’t expect to offer any type of visitor offerings until Sept. 3, after the Labour Day weekend.
Camping reservations with a checkout date on or before Sept. 3 have also been cancelled and will be automatically refunded.
“We're not even giving a second thought to any visitor offer at that point, so I think businesses need to be thinking about that kind of planning horizon for that,” Blake said.
The Columbia Icefields is currently not accessible to the public as there is no immediate access to essential services.
The closure also extended south 50 kilometres into Banff National Park all the way to the Saskatchewan River Crossing.
Blake said this was because Parks Canada’s resources were currently truncated to the north, and the closure made it easier to manage the area.
However, this would likely be one of the first areas to reopen.
There is also discussion around dealing individually with businesses in the northeast end of the park located near Miette Hot Springs.
On Monday, the Municipality of Jasper released the criteria for re-entry, which includes mitigating hazards and restoring basic services.
Amanda B. with CAN-TF2 reported that crews had spent Tuesday removing debris, cleaning up dangerous trees and continue to monitor air quality.
“We’re hoping to get all the security fencing delivered tomorrow morning and putting those up into place to make sure that when residents are back in the community, that any area that is unsafe will be properly marked.”
The assessment has also begun for the Seton – Jasper Healthcare Centre to see what it would take to reopen the hospital.
Blake added that a few essential services were energized on Tuesday and that the grid was incrementally coming online.
Parks Canda will soon start reaching out to hotels in Jasper to see how long they would need to be operational and able to accommodate essential staff and first responders.
“We really like to use the capacity that Jasper has right now rather than put in separate work camps, at least in the short term, so we can use those facilities as they exist,” Blake said.
