Fire on the Mountain

Auteur

Matthew Scace is a journalist for the Calgary Herald and Calgary Sun, and has written for several publications including The Globe and Mail, National Post and Vancouver Sun. Fire on the Mountain is his first book. He lives in Calgary.

Texte du rabat

On a brilliant sunny day at the height of the summer, July 2024, residents and visitors to the picturesque tourist town of Jasper, Alberta, learned that fast-moving forest fires were burning both south and north of town. That left only one westward road out of harm’s way.



Over three frantic days, 5,000 residents and 20,000 tourists were evacuated from Jasper as firefighters used helicopters to battle flames reaching 100-feeet high and leaping from treetop to treetop behind 100-kilometre-per-hour winds. The 25,000-hectare fire was so intense it likely created its own weather system and lightning. Despite heroic efforts, a third of the town was lost.



In this gripping narrative, Calgary Herald reporter Matt Scace talks to the emergency managers who organized the evacuation, the woman who was preparing to go into labour when the fires started, the firefighters who fought through the night to save what they could of the town, and the recovery team leaders travelling the long, painful road to recovery.



Fire on the Mountain also takes a hard look at how the disaster that struck Jasper was decades in the making, and whether Jasper could trigger how urban wildfires are managed in this new age of fire.



A percentage of proceeds from this book will be donated to the Jasper Community Team Society, which distributes all its proceeds to relief efforts.