Jasper’s reconstruction is taking shape, but not without challenges

Jasper contractor Toby Gifford looks through the fencing blocking one of his former workplaces and scans the burned wreckage of what’s left of a house he was building for a family.

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

Now that dream has fallen apart.

The Jasper wildfire in July destroyed 358 structures — including the site Gifford had been working on — representing a third of the city’s buildings.

People on the front lines of the community’s recovery say rebuilding will be a huge challenge, complicated by the number of workers needed, the limited availability of skilled trades and the amount of housing that will be needed for the contractor workforce threatened by the region will flow. damaged city place.

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 has planned several reconstruction projects, including one on the grounds of the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge.

“The magnitude of this is enormous. We’re used to only building six homes a year among the builders that are here in town. So to do over 300 construction in a year is daunting,” Gifford said.

LOOK | Jasper’s path to rebuilding becomes clear, but obstacles lie ahead:

According to Gifford, the availability of local traders is a major challenge in physically carrying out the reconstruction work.

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

To add to the complexity, some of the local merchants Gifford works with lost their homes in the fire and now live outside the city. This means that they will need a place to stay when they start rebuilding again. Any non-local contractors brought in for work will also need a place to stay.

The Alberta government recently announced $112 million to build modular homes for displaced Jasper residents. According to the city, priority for these units will be given to essential workers who have lost their homes.

The municipality has identified locations for housing construction, but Gifford questions whether there is enough space for everyone who works in construction.

“It’s kind of hard to predict what that will look like because we don’t know where some of the trades will be. Will there be work camps for people from out of town to help us with these constructions?”

There are also challenges in obtaining construction supplies and tools. Jasper’s Home Hardware Building Center burned down, so individual contractors will now have to transport materials and tools from elsewhere.

New reconstruction regulations approved

Much of the physical reconstruction is still in the planning stages. Debris removal only recently began and Parks Canada, working with the City of Jasper, only finalized updated reconstruction regulations on October 28.

These regulations include banning the use of wood siding and roofs, the use of fire-resistant building materials, and enforcing a buffer zone around structures that are free of flammable objects and vegetation. In a news release, Parks Canada cited one reason for the rule changes: to improve the community’s wildfire and climate resilience.

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

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

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

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

A long road to recovery

About 1,200 miles away, the town of Paradise, California, implemented similar rebuilding rules after the deadly 2018 Camp wildfire burned nearly the entire town. Before that fire, Paradise had a population of 26,000.

Colette Curtis is Paradise’s director of recovery and economic development. Her department was created after the Camp Fire to oversee recovery activities. During a Zoom interview nearly six years after the fire, Curtis says the recovery is still underway.

“Our population is about 40 percent of the pre-fire population. We are very proud of that. We have recovered just under 40 percent of our homes,” she said.

“We are not working to get back to the population we were before the fire. We may not reach that population. Maybe we’ll get close to that. We also always felt that it would take at least twenty years to get close to that. population.”

Even after investing time, using fire-resistant materials and following building codes designed for better fire protection, Curtis emphasizes that there are no guarantees against Mother Nature.

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

It’s a truth that Toby Gifford thought about when he visited the spot where his carpentry shop used to be. It was made of brick and had large steel garage doors, and it burned in Jasper’s fire.

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

Curtis said Jasperites will come out the other side of this devastation.

“It can feel very hopeless. It’s like a roller coaster. There will be times when you feel joy and euphoria, and there will be times when you feel like you can’t go on anymore. But over time it gets better she said.

“That’s the nature of recovery.”