“Ash everywhere”: Jasper National Park visitors flee wildfire rapidly closing in on Alberta town
[Music] in the [Music] campground at all these officials have never seen anything like this Wildfire threatening the town of Jasper I'm located east of the Jasper National Park Gates which is about 50 kilometers from the town of Jasper and halfway in between is where the Wildfire is located and this wind isn't helping it's believed lightning sparked a wildfire south of Jasper and then it moves East no traffic is allowed through heading west from high Highway 40 and Highway 16 and there is no way in and out in either direction on Highway 93 I'm hearing it's blocked as far as the bamp gates many of the evacuates or most were sent to BC vilmont had a welcome center for all the evacuates from The Jasper National Park area hint in search and rescue along with help from the horse community in this area came together on Tuesday morning to evacuate 20 horses from the Jasper Park Lodge and 30 more from Pyramid Lake thousands of people were evacuated Monday night from the town of Jasper and Jasper National Park from the hiking trails the campgrounds and of course all the hotels that were full one fire is approximately 12 km south of Jasper a both sides of the river and wind May exacerbate the situation the town of Jasper was reporting uh that they were at Max Capacity uh and given their population and their capacity that's about approximately 10,000 people uh Parks Canada was reporting uh up to 15,000 visitors uh in the park at that time so that's that's why we came to uh a number of 25,000 people involved in this evacuation muu landar of Edmonton was having dinner in Jasper with her three young children and husband at the time of the evacuation it took them 3 hours just to get out of the town before they decided to just pull over at a rest for the night and sleep in their car there was Ash everywhere we just noticed Ash just within an hour when we left for supper like we were on the beach and when came back for supper in the city and it was like all Ash everywhere and it was so Smoky some of acues are also being told to go to Calgary or even Grand Prairie but if you are planning to travel to Jasper National Park turn around many people cancelled their reservations in Hinton many hotels had cancellations on Tuesday Morning people knowing that they won't be able to visit the national park for the time being as this situation continues to evolve reporting at Jasper National Park Lisa McGregor Global News