'It was apocalyptic': Neighbouring Hinton learns many lessons from Jasper wildfire
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But Nissen is a former Jasper resident and previously worked in search and rescue operations as a member of the Canadian military. He was part of 442 Squadron, which in 2012 won a global award at the Shephard's Search and Rescue Conference in Dublin, for its rescue of an injured hiker in Hat Mountain, B.C. Nissen vividly remembers rescue operations during the Calgary floods. When he became mayor, part of his orientation was disaster management, and a list of previous Canadian catastrophes was listed. To him, it was like a checklist of hockey cards, 'done that one, seen that one, worked that one.'
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So, Nissen, as a disaster expert and the mayor of a community that's just outside the eastern boundary of Jasper National Park, is uniquely qualified to speak to the wildfire, and how his town of nearly 10,000 has been affected. Over the past couple of years, Hinton has become the home away from home for wildfire evacuees; people fled west from Edson in 2023, and east from Jasper in 2024.
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'We have seen a number of people who are displaced out of Jasper who have settled into Hinton for maybe temporary terms, maybe the long haul,' said Nissen. 'It's tough to give statistics because, at the municipality, we don't really track numbers. But I can say anecdotally that there are a number of people from Jasper who have relocated into Hinton for one reason or another after the fires, and they're very active in our community. They're taking part in all of our community groups. They're volunteering. They're becoming embedded in our community.'
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But, like Edson and Jasper, Hinton is surrounded by forest. It's a town that depends heavily on pulp and paper. Mondi's Hinton mill produces 250,000 tonnes of unbleached kraft pulp per year. And that means fire risk is something that is regularly on Nissen's mind. In fact, after he left the military, he and his wife settled in Jasper. But one of the reasons they chose to leave was because of what they saw as unreasonable fire risk. Nissen saw the large number of dead evergreen trees that surrounded the town, and he felt in his bones that Jasper was a disaster waiting to happen. Sadly, he was right.
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'So, our own fire department has lessons learned directly from having the feet on the ground,' said Nissen. 'We had a very dramatic night, with smoke billowing out from behind the mountains, and large chunks of disgusting black soot falling all over the community.
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