Peering through the wire fence blocking one of his former construction sites, Jasper contractor Toby Gifford scans the charred wreckage of what’s left of a house he was building for a family.

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

Now, that dream is shattered.

The July fire in Jasper destroyed 358 structures — including where Gifford worked — the equivalent of 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 tradesmen and the amount of housing that will be needed for the contractor workforce that is about to flood into the damaged township.

Gifford owns Wild Mountain Construction. Started 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 scale of this is massive. We’re used to only doing six houses a year between the builders that are in town here. So to be looking at doing over 300 structures in one year is daunting,” Gifford said.

STOP | Jasper’s path to rebuilding becomes clear, but obstacles await:

Jasper’s rebuild is taking shape, but not without early challenges

Following the approval of new rebuilding regulations in Jasper, construction crews are facing challenges as the damaged town is rebuilt into a community that will be more fire-resistant. CBC’s Acton Clarkin reports from Jasper.

The availability of local tradesmen, Gifford said, is a significant challenge to 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 some electricians, some plumbers, some mechanics that we’re using … that’s going to be strained,” Gifford said. .

To add to the complexity, some local tradesmen Gifford works with lost their homes in the fire and now live outside the city. That means they will need a place to stay if they return to work on the rebuild. Any non-local contractors who are brought in to work will also need a place to stay.

The Alberta government recently announced $112 million to build modular homes for displaced Jasper residents. Priority for those units is given to essential workers who have lost their homes, according to the municipality.

The municipality has sites designated for housing, but Gifford questions whether there will be enough space for all the construction workers.

“It’s kind of hard to predict what it’s going to look like, because we don’t know where some of the jobs will remain. Will there be work camps for people from outside the city to help us with these constructions?”

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

New reconstruction regulations approved

Much of the physical reconstruction work is still in the planning stages. Debris removal has only recently begun, and Parks Canada, in partnership with the Municipality of Jasper, only completed updated reconstruction regulations on October 28.

These regulations include prohibiting the use of wood siding and roofing, the use of fire-resistant building materials, and the enforcement of a buffer zone around structures free of flammable objects and vegetation. In a news release, Parks Canada cited one reason for the rule changes is to improve community resilience to fire and climate change.

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

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

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

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

A long road to recovery

Just about 2,000 kilometers away, the city of Paradise, California, introduced similar rebuilding rules after the deadly Camp Fire burned nearly the entire city in 2018. Before that fire, Paradise was home to 26,000 residents.

Colette Curtis is Paradise’s Director of Economic Recovery and Development. Her department was created in the wake of the campfire to oversee recovery efforts. In a Zoom interview nearly six years to the day after that fire, Curtis says the recovery is still ongoing.

“Our population is about 40 percent of our pre-fire population. We’re very proud of that. We’ve recovered just under 40 percent of our housing units,” she said.

“We’re not working to get back to the population we were before the fire. We may not reach that population. We might be getting close to it. Also, I always felt it would take at least 20 years to get anywhere near that. population”.

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

“Nothing is going to make a community fireproof, but all of these things combined can reduce your risk,” she said.

It’s a truth that’s on Toby Gifford’s mind as he visits the site of his carpentry shop. It was made of brick with large steel garage doors and burned in Jasper’s fire.

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

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

“It can feel very hopeless. It’s kind of 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. But with time, it will get better. she said.

“That’s the nature of recovery.”