The devastating Jasper wildfire has taken a toll on its 'sister community,' Hinton, Alta. Here's how
Jasper is leaning hard on Hinton to recover and rebuild
The signs are everywhere in Hinton, Alta., from hotel parking lots packed with restoration crew trucks to letter boards welcoming evacuees.
"Jasper neighbours, our hearts are with you," read one multicoloured sign belonging to a flooring business.
Since July 22, when a destructive wildfire forced the evacuation of 25,000 residents and visitors from Jasper National Park, Hinton has increasingly become a life-raft for the nearby mountain community.
At first, it was firefighters, emergency responders, disaster recovery workers and members of the armed forces who arrived in the town about 300 kilometres west of Edmonton, to grapple with the fire that destroyed one third of structures in Jasper on July 24, and the blaze's immediate aftermath. About 1,000 people streamed into the town's 1,300 hotel rooms, and set up camps and command posts in fields, parking lots and an arena.
A year after welcoming wildfire evacuees from the Edson area, Hinton was bracing itself to play host to Jasperites, Hinton Mayor Nicholas Nissen said in an interview last month.
"Everyone's response books had all of the evacuees arriving in Hinton, and that didn't happen," Nissen said.
But with fire and smoke obscuring highways south and east out of Jasper, most of the evacuees were shepherded west, to Valemount, B.C.
Highway 16 was closed just east of Jasper National Park to the B.C. border for about three weeks, kneecapping a key transportation and economic corridor for Hinton during the height of tourist season.
"The visitor economy took a large hit and it's just starting to come back now," Tyler Waugh, executive director of the Hinton Chamber of Commerce, said last week.
And by mid-August, when the emergency workers left and Jasperites were allowed back home, Hinton began to fill up with folks whose Jasper homes and businesses were damaged and destroyed — along with crews of workers tasked with cleaning smoke and ash from buildings, restoring gas and power, and other recovery tasks.
With the spectre of debris removal and reconstruction on the horizon and limited places to stay in Jasper, Nissen says the peak influx of people into Hinton is likely still to come.
"We can expect to see more and more people arriving and spending more and more time here," he said of the town of 10,000 people, which is about 80 kilometres northeast of Jasper.
Mac de Beaudrap, Hinton fire chief, says Jasper, which has about 5,000 residents, is Hinton's "sister community."
Like loyal siblings, Hinton firefighters were the first external fire department to respond to the Jasper wildfire, and the last to leave, he said.
For a month, the mostly volunteer fire department from Hinton split its personnel between the national park and regular duties in Hinton — all while emergency calls within the town hit new record highs, de Beaudrap said.
"We're tired," he says. "At the same time, we want to take care of our brothers and sisters in Jasper that are doing the same job day in, day out. And so we won't stop until we drop."
Nissen said the experience and knowledge Hinton's firefighters gained during the response is "unparalleled," and will help Hinton's forest-flanked community better prepare for wildfires.
De Beaudrap said the extra people in Hinton are increasing demands on civic services, such as water, police, fire, ambulance and civic amenities.
Hinton offered free recreation centre access and transit rides during the month of August to remove barriers for evacuees, Nissen said.
The housing crunch tightens
Where the influx of people has the potential to cause tension is in Hinton's already taxed housing market.
Nissen said the town hasn't attempted to estimate how many extra people are in the community, temporarily or for the long term.
"We are well past the point of sugarcoating ... housing crisis that we are in," said Vanessa La Fleur, a homelessness and at risk of homeless transitions project co-ordinator at Hinton Employment and Learning Place (HELP). "We're at a point where we need housing, and we need it now."
Real estate company Re/Max said the average residential sale listing price as of Monday in Hinton was nearly $500,000 and trending upward.
The Alberta government's annual apartment rental survey of towns, conducted in 2023 found Hinton's vacancy rate dropped from 12.1 per cent in 2021 to 1.6 per cent in 2023.
The same survey found the price of a one-bedroom apartment jumped 28 per cent between 2022 and 2023, and two-bedroom apartments became 27 per cent more expensive.
The average two-bedroom apartment was renting for nearly $1,300 a month in Hinton last year, which was on par with the price of Edmonton apartments.
Exacerbating the problem are landlords converting rental units into short-term rentals that are targeted at visitors, not residents, La Fleur said.
She said it's already difficult for Hintonites who rely on programs like Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped, who face discrimination and price constraints.
"There might be a place for rent, but it's way above their budget," she said. "People who are working are having a hard time."
It's common for people to be sleeping on friends' couches, in their vehicles, or in illegally parked campers because there's nowhere else to stay, she said.
Social supports under pressure
Social services and charities in the town are also taxed.
Hinton Food Bank operations manager Kate Willis says the number of households seeking food has doubled in the past three years. The number of Jasperites seeking help from Hinton's food bank grows weekly, she said. That has prompted the organization to open an hour earlier during weekly distributions just for needy Jasper evacuees.
"It's devastating," Willis said. "People break down at the client intake table. And, you know, we've got the tissues there, and ready. And then all we can do is offer food and try to connect people with services in our community."
Willis said volunteers are working extra hours. Although food drives and donations are keeping the shelves loaded, the food bank is cramped, and Willis is trying to figure out how to extend the organization's hours.
There are also countless stories of Hintonites fundraising, donating and organizing help for their displaced Jasper neighbours. A group of volunteers created the Jasper Relief Effort, finding a vacant storefront to use for free to collect and distribute donations of clothes and other essentials to people who lost their belongings.
Janice Baxter is executive director of the charitable Bridges Society, a mental health support and promotion agency that runs a drop-in centre in Hinton.
The psychological effects are likely to be long-lasting, she said. Some people who lost jobs in Jasper may look in Hinton, making work harder to find, she said.
"There's a lot of human connection that's going to happen during this time too, and hopefully we'll have healthier communities coming out of it on the other end," she said.
Although an economic boom sometimes follows in the wake of disaster, Waugh, from the chamber of commerce, said the effects have been unevenly distributed.
Although hotels and restaurants are now full of contractors, they would normally be filled with tourists and other workers at this time of year, he said. Restoration and cleaning companies, appliance sellers and furniture stores are doing swift business with Jasper customers now, he said.
The retail stores and adventure outfitters that rely on tourists aren't faring as well.
A survey of chamber members found a few business owners saying they might need emergency financial relief or risk shutting down, Waugh said.
Companies are also stressed about a lack of housing for staff, which affects worker recruitment.
"If you're going to grow an economy, you need to grow the community," Waugh said. "And if there's no new housing, that definitely impairs that growth."
Community leaders say the wildfire and its aftermath may lead to more changes in Hinton that are impossible to foresee.
"We're going to be supporting the community of Jasper for years," Nissen said. "That's just the nature of the geography in our part of the world. And we're here for them with whatever they're going to need."
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