Thousands of residents and tourists have fled the largest national park in the Canadian Rockies after authorities warned wildfires were fast approaching, raising fears of another record fire season in the country.
Jasper National Park said early on Tuesday that “multiple wildfires” were burning in the park, located about 370km (230 miles) west of Edmonton in the western province of Alberta.
“This is an evolving situation. Parks Canada fire personnel will continue assessing the wildfires at sunrise,” the park said in a post on its Facebook page.
It added that Parks Canada, which manages Canada’s 48 national parks, was deploying additional resources and staff to the area on Tuesday morning.
Photos and videos shared on social media overnight showed a line of bumper-to-bumper cars and trucks crawling through smoke to try to get out of the park and the town of Jasper, home to 4,700 residents.
“It’s wall-to-wall traffic,” Edmonton resident Carolyn Campbell told The Associated Press news agency in a phone interview from her vehicle early on Tuesday.
Campbell said it took hours to move just 7km (about four miles), and while they had enough gas, she was worried for others who fled with little in the tank. “[The smoke] is pretty thick. We’ve got masks in the car,” she said.
In April, federal officials said Canada risked another “catastrophic” wildfire season amid higher-than-normal spring and summer temperatures across much of the country.
A heat wave descended last week, accentuating drought conditions, and several wildfires broke out.
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