Jasper residents survey the damage as tours of wildfire-ravaged neighbourhoods continue
Bus tours of the wildfire zone began Monday as wildfire fight continues
When Stephen Nelson saw the wreckage of his Jasper home come into view, it felt like a funeral procession.
Nelson, 65, is a resident of the now-destroyed Pine Grove Manor, a seniors housing facility in Jasper. He had waited three years for a placement at the residence and had moved in just 11 days before evacuation orders were issued, forcing 25,000 people to flee the national park.
Two days later, a wall of flames moved in from the south, destroying one-third of the buildings in the historic town.
Nelson, a 16-year resident of Jasper, said surveying the damage helped him grapple with his grief and come to terms with the losses in a way that reminded him of a wake.
"This was kind of like going to the viewing at the funeral home," he said "This wasn't the funeral. This was the viewing. And on a personal level, it gave me that stage of closure."
Nelson, a retired journalist and newspaper editor, said he wanted to go back to Jasper for himself, but also, to help illustrate the disaster for others.
"I wanted to see it with my own eyes but I also wanted to be able to tell the story and that's really why I wanted to go back."
'As if it was never there'
Nelson is among hundreds of evacuees now joining a series of grim processions through the community, tours offering residents the chance to view the devastation firsthand.
People who lost their homes are being given precedence on the tours. Nelson was among the first groups to view the devastation Monday, driving through the wreckage of once scenic streets.
A video he took from inside the bus shows ash-covered streets lined with gutted homes and charred vehicles singed with black.
As the bus — filled with the low murmurs of its passengers moves slowly down the street — the skeletal structure of the manor that once stood overlooking Geikie Street, in the heart of the community's core, comes into view.
"This is my block. This is insane," Nelson can be heard saying, "OK there it is, or there it was."
"Look at that. Gone. As if it was never there."
There is still no timeline for when residents can return to Jasper, but the tours are being offered to help residents prepare for re-entry. As of Tuesday, 576 people have registered.
Separate tours are also being scheduled for business owners to survey property damage for insurance and rebuilding purposes.
The tours were postponed on the weekend after a firefighter died on the frontline.
Residents are not allowed off the buses during the tours and can only survey the damage from the safety of their seats.
The fire, which continues to burn in the park and pose a threat to the community, is estimated to have burned 34,000 hectares.
Parks Canada officials expect the fire will remain an active and volatile threat on the landscape for weeks and that firefighting efforts will continue through the fall.
On the night of the evacuation, Nelson said he only packed a small bag of essentials before jumping on a bus full of other manor residents headed west.
He recalls feeling a sense of dread as they pulled out of the driveway, bound for Valemount, B.C., as clouds of ash began raining down and plumes of smoke funnelled across the sky.
Nelson said he learned that flames had reached the townsite as he and other residents of the manor gathered for dinner at a hotel.
He said they watched through tears as breaking news broadcasts played across the hotel restaurant's television screens, showing the flames consuming homes and buildings.
He learned the following morning that his home at Pine Grove, along with hundreds of other buildings in Jasper, had been levelled by the flames.
Two weeks later, seeing the community in ashes felt surreal. He said the fire was a monster and the wreckage it caused looks something like a war zone.
"We had seen video of the destruction," he said. "But it was another thing to be there and see it up close."
Nelson said the sense of sorrow on the tour bus was palpable. But so too was a sense of determination among the evacuees to return home and rebuild.
"There were some people who sat silently and in disbelief and never said a thing for the whole two hours we were weaving back and forth along the streets of Jasper," he said.
"Grieving is different for everybody."
Nelson is thankful that he and his neighbours were unharmed and the community was evacuated swiftly.
But he can't help feeling haunted about the things he left behind — irreplaceable heirlooms, including a cardigan knitted by his mother in "Superman red," a family bible and his father's coat, hand-stitched by his late grandmother.
"That was a knife through the heart," he said. "I have lost everything.
"I was thinking about things I'd left behind that I wish to God I had gone back and saved, saved from the fire."
Linda McLaren, who lost both her home and her church to the fire, felt compelled to return to the evacuation zone on one of the first tours.
She said the bus fell eerily silent as it moved slowly from lot to lot. Homes she knew well were unrecognizable. The Jasper United Church she called home was razed to the ground.
"My mind knows what it has seen but the heart is still processing," she said. "My heart is still processing."
When the evacuation orders came McLaren, reverend of the church, was forced to vacate the manse and leave her beloved parish behind.
She packed a few things into a bag, loaded her beloved rescue cat, Maia, into her car and headed east to Edmonton.
She said it's painful to think about things she lost, including her mother's cookbooks, dog-eared from many Saturdays spent as a family baking cakes and pies.
She said it was striking to see some properties untouched by the flames. Each building still standing felt like a message that the community and its people are resilient, she said.
"For me, it was a real symbol of hope," she said.
"Other than what I had in my suitcase, I've lost everything. And though I've lost everything, I'm still so aware of how much I have."
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With files from Ariel Fournier, Clare Bonneyman