25,000 evacuated from tourist town of Jasper

Buildings in the Canadian tourist town of Jasper have been burning after wildfires forced 25,000 people to evacuate the area on Tuesday, officials said.

The blaze has spread through Jasper National Park, causing “significant loss” within the town, according to park officials on X, formerly Twitter.

Hundreds of wildfires have sparked in the western provinces of Alberta and British Columbia (BC).

The region has been hit by more than 58,000 lightning strikes within the last week, sparking new blazes after a three-week heat wave, according to BC Wildfire Service.

Around 1,900 Alberta firefighters have been deployed, assisted by personnel from Alaska and Australia, and are working to save local infrastructure.

That includes the Trans Mountain Pipeline, a Canadian government-owned pipeline that runs through Jasper National Park. As of Wednesday it was still operating, with sprinklers being used to protect it.

There have been more than 400 fires recorded in British Columbia and 176 in the neighbouring province of Alberta.

Fires were first reported in Jasper last week. The town’s mayor, Richard Ireland, told CBC that the town was facing its “worst nightmare”.

Eleonor Dumlao told the Edmonton Journal she was filled with panic when her family received the evacuation order. They left Jasper on Monday night and headed to an evacuation centre in Edmonton.

“It was so very terrible experience for us, and I was so panicking that time. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to get first,” she told the newspaper.

Jasper National Park said on X that “air quality had deteriorated” in the area. The park is the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies.

After evacuations were issued, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith told residents to “leave safely” on Wednesday. In a post on Facebook, she said she was in “constant contact” with the authorities.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government has approved a request for federal assistance for Alberta.

“We’re deploying @CanadianForces resources, evacuations support, and more emergency wildfire resources to the province immediately — and we’re coordinating firefighting and airlift assistance,” Mr Trudeau said on X.

Daniel Turner also recounted how he evacuated the wildfires to the Edmonton Journal, saying he followed evacuation orders with three of his friends but hit bumper-to-bumper traffic fleeing Jasper and turned around.

The group slept in a Canadian Tire parking lot.

“You could see it deteriorating, like ash falling,” he said of the wildfire smoke.

Earlier in the week, several US states including California and Utah were hit by wildfires.

More than 30 million people in the US have been affected by heat warnings since early July, according to the National Weather Service. The warnings are in place in California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state.