Better defining jurisdictional boundaries and improving co-ordination between agencies are among about two dozen ways the Municipality of Jasper could improve its wildfire response, a new report says.
On Thursday, the town released an after-action review of the 2024 Jasper wildfire, which examined the effectiveness of the municipality’s response plans and identified gaps and strengths. The review states that its purpose is not to assign blame.
Among several recommendations, the report suggested clarifying expectations and jurisdictional concerns between the municipal, provincial and federal governments, as well as Parks Canada and provincial agencies like Alberta Wildfire.
“Provincial involvement added complexity to the response,” the report says.
Responding to emergencies, like wildfires, is typically a provincial duty, but Jasper falls within federal jurisdiction because it’s in a national park. Officials from the three levels of government previously expressed how navigating those jurisdictions complicated the recovery effort.
The Alberta government wasn’t responsible for leading the wildfire response in this case, but it “regularly requested information and sought to exercise decision-making authority,” the report says.
Alberta Wildfire supported firefighting operations and participated in the incident management team, the report says. But the jurisdictional overlap “created political challenges that disrupted the focus of incident commanders,” taking their focus away from directing the wildfire response and re-entry as they spent time managing questions and issues.
The report noted, however, that mutual aid agreements and solid working relationships allowed for “strong operability of municipal, provincial, federal and non-governmental partners.”
Pre-established protocols between the municipality and Parks Canada, and “external support teams” arriving swiftly reinforced firefighting capacity and ensured a unified response, the report says.
CBC News has requested comment from Alberta Wildfire, Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen, Parks Canada, and federal Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience Eleanor Olszewski.
The report, prepared by two consulting firms hired by the municipality, was released nearly a full year after a large wildfire reached the Jasper townsite, about 315 kilometres southwest of Edmonton.
The fire destroyed 358 structures in Jasper — about one-third of its total buildings. Firefighter Morgan Kitchen was killed after being struck by a falling tree.
The Insurance Bureau of Canada estimates the fire caused about $1.2 billion in insured damage.
The after-action review focuses on emergency plans the municipality has in place for wildfire, evacuation and incident management, inter-agency co-ordination and resource allocation for incident management, the incident command post and the emergency co-ordination centre, the report states.
It only focuses on federal and provincial jurisdiction when it overlaps with that of the municipality, such as the unified command. The consultants did not review the post-fire recovery efforts.
From February through March, the firms examined seven of the municipality’s emergency management plans and conducted online surveys about deployment issues, receiving input from 138 firefighters and 115 incident management team members. They also hosted 68 people from various government agencies and the private sector, who were directly involved in the response, at a day-long in-person workshop.