The Jasper re-entry on Friday will now be for residents only, officials announced Wednesday.
Previously, the incident management team had said there was no way to keep non-residents from returning to town on Friday.
They have now walked that statement back.
“Re-entry on Aug. 16 is for residents only,” Parks Canada said in a post on its website on Wednesday.
“Resident security concerns have been heard. Your safe return is our priority. We are in this together.”
You can’t really blame them. It’ll be a lot easier to pick up the pieces without a bunch of lookie-loos getting in the way (and they don’t need even the occasional would-be looter, either). The visitors can wait until residents have settled back in and surviving shops and services are back up.
The press should definitely be allowed in. It’s wild to me how little coverage of wildfires there’s been in Canadian news this summer (by design). What climate change? /s
Why would anyone want to go right now?
That’s like “let’s visit New Orleans” a week after Katrina.
Obviously less sad/awful/catastrophic than Katrina, but it’s a town of people grieving their loss of their homes, businesses, environment, while having to navigate a complicated web of insurance and government contracts with Parks Canada.
Hopefully the fact that this was a national park that was affected will make the federal government start considering a federal wildfire fighting program.
Firefighting is in the province’s purview, so they would have to sign on to the fed’s taking control … which will never happen.
Edit to add … On a good note DeHavilland is building a manufactuting plant in Calgary to pump out the “DHC-515 Firefighter … to build on the history of the Canadair CL-215 and CL-415 aircraft” source. That’s good news for the whole world as the 215 and 415 continue to be the workhorses of forest fire fighting.
