The fast-moving Jasper, Alta., wildfire was fuelled by a web of extreme conditions that converged into what experts described as a monstrous fire, serving as a disastrous example of what's become increasingly common across Canada's boreal forest," according to reports by Canadian Press.
What has happened in Jasper National Park is a "microcosm of what we're seeing across Western Canada," said wildfire risk expert and former Parks Canada wildland firefighter Mathieu Bourbonnais.
Questions and accusations quickly followed, including from critics who argue Parks Canada and other government agencies did not do enough to protect Jasper.
The reality, says wildfire expert Chris Stockdale to The Canadian Press, is that the fire eludes simple explanations.
“I think the compelling story is that it’s complex,” said Stockdale, a wildfire risk management expert at Canada's Northern Forestry Centre in Edmonton.
What were some of the major drivers of the Jasper wildfire?
Wildfire expert Mike Flannigan tells The Canadian Press the major drivers of the fire were a confluence of several extreme conditions. Drought in Western Canada combined with a roughly three-week stretch of hot temperatures to dry out the vegetation in the forest.
Lightning strikes on Monday night are thought to have lit the sparks that combined with strong winds to fan the flames across a dried-out landscape primed for a major fire, said Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University.
"It's basically a moving monster."
The extreme conditions underlying the wildfire are "consistent with what we expect with climate change," Flannigan said.
Are Canada's wildfire-fighting agencies doing enough prescribed burns?
Indigenous peoples, who were forcibly driven out of what's now known as Jasper in the early 20th century, had a long history of prescribed burns, which also helps reduce the risk of an out-of-control blaze. For many decades now, provincial and federal agencies have suppressed fires across Canada's forests.
Parks Canada eventually reintroduced prescribed burns starting in the 1980s, expanding it to Jasper in 1996, but the scale and frequency of those burns have not made up for years of suppression, a 2022 federal report said.
"We have to start turning that tide I think really, really soon," said Bourbonnais, who's an ex-member of Alberta's disbanded Wildfire Rappel Program.
