Forest fire specialists believe the valley bottom of Jasper National Park is now experiencing drought that rivals anything experienced in the park in the last hundred years. It is creating conditions where forest fires could not only start easily, but could also spread with greater simplicity and intensity than usual. In short, this summer could be a seriously potent season for forest fires.

“Forest conditions are about as dry as they have ever been in parts of the park right now,” said Kim Weir, Fire Communications Officer for Jasper National. “We’ve moved the forest fire risk levels into moderate for the second time this spring already. That’s fairly unusual.”

Weir said that 1998 and 2003 were benchmark years in Jasper National Park for intense, widespread fires. In those years, fires burned hotter, harder and more readily because of exceptionally dry conditions.

Weir said that conditions right now are drier than in both of those years.

“Fires are going to happen. It’s just a matter of when and then how we respond to it,” said Weir. “Those were really dry years and we had fires over large areas. It was really scary.”

Signs are already foreboding. Since the middle of April, some 250 forest and grass fires have blazed across Alberta during one of the driest season’s the province has ever experienced. The province has already spent more than its $90 million budget fighting fires and the summer has not even officially started yet.

“It is very dry out there right now,” said Dave Smith, a fire and vegetation specialist with Jasper National Park on April 15. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if we went up to high risk tomorrow or the day after.”

“It’s one of the driest points in the history of record keeping for the park... those records go back to around the early 1900s.” 

Smith explained that right now, the drought code (a measure that the park uses to gauge how dry the ground is) sits at a 600, which in the past has been the measure found at the end of the summer in Jasper, not the beginning. Typically, spring in Jasper right now should be measured at a 300.

He said that it’s entirely possible that the drought code could go up to 1,000 over the summer, which is also the number found around Kelowna during the fires that raged there several years ago.

“We rarely get up there, but it’s entirely possible this year,” he said.

Smith also said that should a major forest fire start right now, parks would face more logistics problems than usual in fighting it. While there are fire fighting assets (firefighters, machinery, etc.) in place to handle a fire, they have not reached the same capacity they operate at in the middle of the summer. 

“A spark on a warm day could really make for some problems, especially this early in the season, when crews are still getting together,” said Smith.

Smith said that conditions have been getting drier and drier, on average, in the park for the better part of the past eight or nine years. He said at areas like Buffalo Prairies, just south of the Highway 93 turnoff to Marmot Basin, where there are many dead trees, most people think pine beetle is the culprit. But it’s not. He estimated that 70 to 80 per cent of the dead trees there have died due to their inability to adapt to the drier conditions over the years.

“It’s just stress. That’s what does it. They can’t handle it,” said Smith.

The problem is also exacerbated by, ironically, a century of forest fire fighting in Jasper. Fire was traditionally seen by parks as an enemy and as something to fight. For years, Jasper National Park and its fire management services was very good at fighting that fight, said Weir. However, that lack of fire means that the forest is now stocked with more fuel (dead trees, downed branches, etc.) that should have burned up in a naturally started fire decades ago.

“We really are fighting the legacy of Smokey the Bear,” said Weir.

Jasper’s fire management teams engage in brushing and clearing operations to clear the fuel and set up fire guards and controlled burns to stymy the legacy of too much forest fighting, but Jasper National Park is a huge place. Despite their best efforts, they can’t stop the fact right now, the town site is surrounded by a forest that is more prone to burn hotter, stronger and more destructive than is natural.

Still, even with the dangerous conditions, there’s no guarantee that a major outbreak of forest fires will occur this year.

Weir said that last year, conditions were actually drier at the beginning of the summer than conditions right now. However, some heavy rains in June dampened the risk.

Both Weir and Smith explained that the primary cause of most fires is human action. While lightning causes nearly half of most fires, unattended campfires, casually strewn cigarette butts, sparks from trains onto dry grass, and countless other human-induced reasons are the main reason forest fires start.

“In the sub-alpine areas now, things aren’t too bad, we’re not worried about there, but it’s along the valley bottom where most of the people area; that’s where its so dry right now,” said Smith.

Smith said that people should be incredibly careful if they have a campfire out in the bush.

“You really, really gotta make sure that fire is out before you go,” said Smith. “If you see any sort of smoke out there, do not be afraid to call. We’d rather have to deal with a false alarm over having a fire get completely out of control.”