As a quick aside, there needs to be an independent and complete review of the Jasper fire. In large part, what happened was a result of a pyrocumulonimbus, a fire-generated thunderstorm. This is the most intense display of Mother Nature's energy, in terms of the fire world, and that, in large part, was the reason that we lost a third of the town.
What can we do? There is, as mentioned, FireSmart. Jasper is at the confluence of three valleys, a high-risk location: Valleys act as corridors, wicks and pathways. They knew it was a high-risk location and they had been doing a lot of work, but those embers can travel kilometres: The West Kelowna fire jumped over Okanagan Lake in 2023.
These are three ingredients: vegetation, ignition and weather. Let's say we can't do anything about climate change and extreme weather. Okay, fine, we can't do anything about lightning and weather ignitions.
People cause fires; we can and are doing things on that front.
Then, the last thing is the vegetation. Managing vegetation in high-risk areas and around high-risk communities will help reduce the likelihood of extreme and catastrophic fire, but will never eliminate it. When things are extreme, as long as there's stuff to burn, even if it is leafy, like aspen—in Fort McMurray, we're surrounded by aspen and we saw what happened there—fuel is fuel is fuel, unfortunately: It burns and can burn at a fairly high intensity, even if it's not a conifer.