Jasper wildfire: Alberta government to look into mixed messaging in evacuation orders
The Alberta government said it has questions and will be looking into the messaging used in evacuation orders issued Monday night amid a wildfire in the Jasper region.
Just before 10 p.m. Monday, an evacuation order was issued for the Town of Jasper due to a wildfire south of the townsite.
At 10:18 p.m., the entire Jasper National Park was placed under evacuation order.
That order stated the fire was coming towards town and was expected to reach the community in five hours.
In another update just after 11 p.m., the Alberta Emergency Alert stated the fire was not, in fact, expected to reach the community in five hours — rather, that everyone in the town should be out within five hours.
Public Safety and Emergency Services Minister Mike Ellis was asked about the mixed messaging during a news conference the following morning.
“The original message was put out by the local municipality. Obviously, they would have made that decision, and the decision to use that messaging, based upon the information that they had at the time,” Ellis said.
“As new information came in, they corrected it. But that decision is made by the local municipality in the incident command team in the Jasper area.”
Ellis said he and Premier Danielle Smith had questions themselves about the messaging. He said it’s something the province will look into.
“We’re going to have to inquire as to what is the data that the municipality used in order to make that decision,” Ellis said.
“We’re going to have to figure out if there is a better way, because … I think there’s a lot of people that were scared.”
Global News reached out to the municipality, which deferred questions to Parks Canada. Global News has reached out to Parks Canada for comment. As of publishing,
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