In their own words: Wildfire evacuees recount leaving Jasper

Thousands of residents and visitors were ordered to leave Jasper, Alta., overnight as wildfires burned inside the national park.

People initially left for Hinton and British Columbia before the province told evacuees to head to Grande Prairie, Edmonton and Calgary.

Some evacuees recounted their experiences to CTV News Edmonton on Tuesday.

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Here's what they had to say:

Chelsey Hulan, visitor

"They said we could stay overnight if we wanted to as long as we were out of the campground by 8:30 a.m. We debated whether packing up at night or daylight with wildlife and everything was the right call. We packed up when everything was wet because it rained all night, but we got out, so it's all good."

"We were in Jasper for a few nights and we were going to do a cabin for the last night, so I guess we'll save some money."

"It was our one family trip for the summer. I guess back to reality."

Charissa West, resident

"It wasn't a surprise with how many dead trees there are around. It's been on everyone's mind. It's my second summer working in Jasper. With how dry the winter was, it was an inevitability at this point. It wasn't a surprise. For the last couple of days, we had a pre-evacuation … because there was a fire right up there."

"There was definitely lots of smoke. I work up in Maligne Lake so it's a 45-minute drive, so we got there and they were telling to head west where the road is on the east side, and as soon as I drove five minutes down the highway, it's back-logged really badly down the highway. You could tell some people had been sitting there for a while. Messaging with some of my friends that live in town, they had been sitting in traffic for about four hours. It was gridlocked. It was really, really bad, actually. It felt like you couldn't do anything and you weren't moving for quite a while."

Don Schroll, resident

"My partner realized that it was probably a good idea to fill up the tank, and just after she did that, we got the alert on our phones to evacuate."

"She was about 10 minutes away and she was on the road for four-and-a-half hours trying to get to the kennel so we could get the dogs evacuated."

"About 5:30 a.m., we were able to head east to Hinton instead of Valemount like everyone else did."

"It was really strange because there were so few cars going that way … It was kind of strange, especially the four, five hours of a New York-style traffic jam."

"It was really surreal."