Jasper’s rebuild taking shape, but not without early challenges | CBC News

Looking through the wire fence blocking off one of his former construction sites, Jasper contractor Toby Gifford scans the burned wreckage of what’s left of a home he was building for a family. 

“The ultimate goal was just to get a family into their home for Christmas,” said Gifford.

Now, that dream is dashed.

July’s wildfire in Jasper destroyed 358 structures — including the site Gifford had been working on — equalling one-third of the town’s buildings.

People on the front lines of the community’s recovery say the rebuild will be an immense challenge complicated by the number of workers needed, the limited availability of skilled tradespeople, and the amount of housing that will be required for the workforce of contractors imminently flooding into the damaged townsite.

Gifford owns Wild Mountain Construction. He started the general contracting and construction project management company in 2019, working exclusively in the Jasper area. In recent months, he’s been planning multiple rebuild projects, including one on the grounds of the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge.

“The scale of this is massive. We’re used to only doing maybe six homes a year between the builders that are in town here. So to look at doing 300-plus structures in a year is daunting,” Gifford said.

WATCH | Jasper’s path toward rebuild becoming clear, but obstacles lie ahead:

Availability of local tradespeople, Gifford said, is one significant challenge to physically getting rebuilding work done.

“A lot of our building community shares the same contractors. We have a small subcontractor base that we use. So we have a few electricians, a few plumbers, a few mechanical guys that we use … that’s going to be strained,” said Gifford.

To add to the complexity, some local tradespeople Gifford works with lost their homes in the fire, and are now living out of town. That means they will need somewhere to stay if they come back to work on the rebuild. Any non-local contractors that are brought in for work will need somewhere to stay, too.

The Government of Alberta recently announced $112 million intended to build to modular homes for displaced Jasper residents. Priority for those units is being given to essential workers who lost their homes, according to the municipality. 

The Municipality of Jasper has sites designated for the housing, but Gifford wonders whether there will be enough space for everyone working in construction.

“It’s kind of hard to foresee what that’s going to look like, because we don’t know where some trades are going to stay. Are there going to be work camps for people from out of town to help us with these builds?”

There are also challenges with getting building supplies and tools. Jasper’s Home Building Centre burned down, so individual contractors will now have to transport materials and tools in from elsewhere.

New rebuilding regulations approved

Much of the physical rebuilding work is still in the planning phase. Debris removal has only recently started, and Parks Canada, in partnership with the municipality, only finalized updated rebuilding regulations on October 28.

Those regulations include banning the use of wood siding and roofs, using fire-resistant building materials, and enforcing a buffer zone around structures clear of flammable items and vegetation. In a press release, Parks Canada cited one reason for the rule changes is to improve the community’s wildfire and climate resilience.

“We want to give people lots of options to rebuild, and we want to rebuild in a way that suits the community needs today and into the future,” said Parks Canada planner Emily Goldney.

Some of the new rules are based on past recommendations from a national program called FireSmart, which communities use to protect themselves against wildfire, but Goldney says Parks Canada cast a wide net in its research.

“We consulted with a lot of experts. We talked to people from Natural Resources Canada. We talked to experts in fires, mining, talked to engineers and lawyers,” she said.

“We also reviewed best practices and planning across North America to make sure that we were aligned with what other municipalities are doing.”

A long road to recovery

Just about 2,000 kilometres away, the town of Paradise, Calif., adopted similar rebuilding rules after the deadly Camp wildfire burned almost the entire town in 2018. Before that fire, Paradise was home to 26,000 residents.

Colette Curtis, the community’s recovery and economic development director, said her department was created following the Camp wildfire to oversee recovery activities.

During an interview nearly six years to the day after that fire, Curtis said recovery is still ongoing and the community’s population has been slow to rebound.

“Our population is at about 40 per cent of our pre-fire population. We’re very proud of that. We have recovered a little under 40 per cent of our housing units,” she said.

“We’re not working to get back to the population that we were before the fire. We may not get to that population. We may get near that. We also have always felt it would take at least 20 years to get close to that population.”

Even after putting in the time investment, using fire resistant materials and following building regulations designed for better fire protection, Curtis stresses that there are no guarantees against Mother Nature.

“Nothing will make a community fireproof, but all of these things layered together can reduce your risk,” she said.

It’s a truth that is on the mind of Toby Gifford as he visited the site where his carpentry workshop used to be. It was made of brick with large steel garage doors, and it burned in Jasper’s fire.

“The FireSmart materials are only as good as, you know, the size of fire that it that they’re going to face. So this fire was big enough that it didn’t really matter,” said Gifford.

Curtis said Jasperites will rebuild from the devastation in time.

“It can feel very hopeless. It’s kind of like a roller coaster. There’s going to be times that you feel joy and euphoria, and there’s going to be times that you feel like you cannot keep going. But over time, it does get better,” she said.

“That’s the nature of recovery.”