CANMORE – Ryan Titchener was fast asleep when his roommate pounded on his bedroom door, screaming at him to wake up and get moving because the town was under evacuation order as a dangerous wildfire approached.
A resident of the national park townsite for 20 years and a long-time employee of Jasper’s Marmot Basin ski resort, Titchener, still dazed from being hastily woken, grabbed his guitar, passport, water and food before jumping in his camper van to take the hours’ long journey in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the only safe route out of town to British Columbia.
That was about 10:30 p.m. on Monday (July 22), but two days later, he learned his three-bedroom apartment home in The Ramparts building burned to the ground in a fire that roared through the townsite, destroying homes and businesses, on the night of July 24.
“The landlord has reached out to us to tell us the bad news that the property had been destroyed,” he said.
“There’s nothing salvageable about it – it’s all gone and I’ve seen photos of it as well. It’s all in the ash now, but the memories will never burn.”
While Titchener doesn’t have a home to go back to, the former ski patroller and currently a foreman in the grooming department at Marmot Basin does have a job given the local ski resort was spared the wrath of the wildfire’s destructive path.
Marmot Basin ski resort has reported that infrastructure at the ski hill has not been affected by the fire, and said all facilities, buildings and ski lifts are completely intact.
“Our first priority continues to support our staff during this profoundly difficult time,” states the ski resort on social media.
“Our intention is to operate our ski area for this coming season. This will take much work on the part of many and we can't wait to see our friends back on the slopes this winter.”
Titchener is one of many wildfire evacuees who have landed in the Bow Valley while awaiting news of when they can return to Jasper, likely weeks away.
He was lucky he jumped into his camper van when it was time to evacuate, so he’s had accommodation as he goes.
With initial reports from Alberta Wildfire suggesting the fire would reach the townsite within five hours, Titchener said there wasn’t much time.
“There was a bit of a rushed panic amongst everyone and I didn’t have time to grab as much as I wanted. It was survival really at that point. It was food, gas, water,” he said.
“The only personal item I ran back up and grabbed was my guitar.”
It was only after he evacuated that Titchener wished he had time to collect a few other personal items.
For instance, his sit-ski, which he uses to get around Marmot Basin following a serious climbing accident several years ago, or his kayaks for paddling trips in the mountains.
He said they are like a “lifeline in the mountains.”
“All these things can be replaced, and I will replace them, but they are symbolic and have a deeper meaning for me personally with my connection to the mountains,“ he said.
Other more sentimental items, like his grandfather’s Tilley hat and chisel set are also gone, as are many cherished items from friends and family he has collected through the years.
“All these personal items that are not going to be replaced – you cannot replace them through money and through insurance companies – and those are going to be gone,” Titchener said.
“But you have your memories and those can’t be burnt.”
One of the biggest miracles was the fact that the national park community of about 4,700 residents and thousands and thousands of tourists from across Canada and around the world all made it out alive.
Titchener has many friends who are firefighters, paramedics and other first responders – and all are well trained to deal with the situation that Jasper was faced with.
He knows people on the frontline who fought the 100-metre high wall of flames that descended on the townsite before they had to be pulled due to unsafe and dangerous conditions.
“There is just overwhelming gratitude towards our first responders and our firefighters. These people have done this because they wanted to help and they didn’t leave the town,” he said.
“They literally just fought a war for us, and really just to protect the infrastructure of the town. They’re heroes.”
Night of evacuation
When Titchener was first woken up the night of the evacuation, he said the skies were filled with smoke and ash was falling.
“Looking down the street there were a line of cars and I knew right away this was real,” he said, adding he knew a wildfire in Jasper with the pine-beetle ridden trees was inevitable.
There was one safe route out of the town that night of evacuation on July 22; Highway 16 west into British Columbia, a province that was also on fire.
The wildfires to the north and south of town, which later merged into a mega-fire, blocked access to Highway 93 North to Lake Louise and Highway 16 to Hinton.
Titchener said the residential streets were grid-locked as residents tried to flee throughout the night and into Tuesday, as vehicles had to get through one intersection.
“You get in your car and inch your way into line and it seems like nothing but red lights in front of you and white lights behind you,” he said.
“You’re in this ominous line of people who are just kind of in and amongst the smoke, and it's with ash falling down, and you can see people running by with jerrycans.
“We joined the line of people inching our way out of town, which definitely took hours to do.”
It was after 3 a.m. before Titchener finally made it to Valemount, B.C., about 125 kilometres away from Jasper, where friends had a hobby farm nearby where people could park.
“We were kind of jamming everybody into this field and setting up tents and that lasted until about 5 a.m. in the morning, and finally everything kind of calmed down and cars still trickled in even after we fell asleep,” he said.
“Then in the morning, the reality was kicking in, kind of what was happening, everybody's kind of walking around scratching their heads not knowing what to do, but we did what we needed to do, where we got out of the way and that was it.”
After a couple of days, Titchener started making his way to Revelstoke and then onto Canmore.
Many people in Canmore have offered him a place to stay, but for now, he is happy in his camper van, and wants other evacuees to be able to take up those offers of temporary accommodation.
“I have friends with kids and pets and people that just don’t have anything and they're their sleeping in mini-cars and things like that,” he said.
Local social media sites have posts from residents offering wildfire evacuees a couch to crash on, a place to park their vehicles or campers, or spare beds to sleep from Banff to Canmore and Lac Des Arcs to Exshaw.
Helen Rose said she has a couple of campers in her yard in Lac Des Arcs and an extra room for anyone who needs help.
Rose has a strong connection to Jasper having moved there in 1983 as a young 21-year-old and worked as a bartender at La Terrace lounge at the Jasper Park Lodge.
“My son was born in Jasper and his family are true Jasperites and still live there,” she said.
“I spoke with them the other day and they are safe – thankfully – but they're also struggling not knowing what is going on. There’s lots of healing to do.”
During a press conference on Monday (July 29), Ron Hallman, Parks Canada’s president and CEO, said the residents and business operators of Jasper are facing extremely difficult circumstances at this time.
He said the federal agency is focused solely on the safety and well-being of residents – many of whom are also Parks Canada employees – both in the short-term and as planning turns to re-entry and re-building as the situation on the ground stabilizes.
“Parks Canada will be taking all possible steps to streamline local review and approval processes in support of the rebuilding effort that will come, both for residents and for business operators and their employees, whose livelihoods have been affected,” Hallman said.
Titchener, like so many others, is keen to get home to Jasper once it’s safe to do so.
Although about one-third of the buildings in the townsite were completely destroyed by the raging wildlife, Titchener said it was mostly residences on the one side of town.
“When you think of the numbers of people that were affected, it's well more than 30 per cent of the town because the actual population density in that area is higher than on the other side,” he said.
“I can’t wait to get home and rebuild our town.”
