Helplessness and the Jasper inferno

There's a wash of emotions that surely hit the firefighters having to retreat from the wall of flame, and the Jasper residents learning by social media and rumour that their homes and businesses were lost, and Alberta's premier tearing up while waxing rhapsodically about what was lost and what will be recovered.

There's despair. Anxiety. Grief. Permeating all of it, perhaps, is something that isn't quite an emotion but can bring them all gushing to the fore:

Helplessness.

In too many western Canadian towns in recent memory — Fort McMurray and Slave Lake and Lytton — they've known how this helplessness roars into their lives.

Such is the menace of wildfire, that devastating mix of three of the four elements. Fire scarring the earth and being rushed along by the wind, but without enough water to slow its carnage.

Parks Canada had spent years trying to minimize the risk in the woods surrounding Jasper. 

Unlike the B.C. and Alberta towns mentioned above, where fire raced in before defenders could properly respond, wildfire crews had fought for days against the inferno that was threatening the town of Jasper from the south.

On Wednesday evening, much of that resistance force had to pull back for their own safety, retreating from nature's fury as it raced forward.

Mike Ellis, Alberta's minister of public safety and emergency services, brought some perspective on why no person or machine could ultimately stop this fire.

It had moved five kilometres in less than 30 minutes, he said. The flames were 100 metres high.

"Any firefighter will tell you there's little to nothing you can do when you have a wall of flames coming in like that," Ellis told reporters.

Retreat tends to be the last thing firefighters want to do. They'll often stay and fight right up to the point that continuing to do so would put their lives in danger, and often beyond that point, only to face grim consequences afterward.

"This decision has not been made lightly," the incident commanders for Parks Canada and the Municipality of Jasper said in a joint statement on Wednesday, shortly before flames reached the town.

"First responders dedicate their lives to the protection of people and communities. Given the intensity of fire behaviour being observed the decision has been made to limit the number of responders exposed to this risk."