'Province wasn't geared up for this wildfire season': Yellowhead County mayor not satisfied with Alberta support

The mayor of Yellowhead County told reporters on Saturday he doesn't think the province was prepared for this spring's wildfire season.

"I am not satisfied with the amount of support we’re getting from the province. In my opinion, the province wasn’t geared up for this wildfire season when it hit, and it hit early," Wade Williams told reporters during a county update. "So are they going to learn from this? I suspect they will, and hopefully next year things will be better. The wildfire budget has been cut over the last few years, and substantially."

Williams has previously called for the provincial election, scheduled for May 29, to be postponed as a result of the fires.

Elections Alberta says there is no mechanism in place to postpone the election.

"I still believe today that the election should be postponed," Williams said. "People should be back to work and working for Albertans before we burn up and we don’t have an Alberta to worry about."

Residents in Yellowhead County were among the first to face evacuation orders, with Evansburg residents being forced out of their homes to the nearby community of Wildwood nearly two weeks ago, before fire threatened Wildwood as well, and residents had to move again.

Williams talked about the stress Yellowhead County residents have been under as a result of evacuations since then.

"Things looked better, so they were allowed back into their communities for a 24-hour stretch, things went really bad again, so they had to be evacuated again to Edson," he said. "A couple of days later the fire from the south came up and threatened the town of Edson, they had to be evacuated again to Hinton and Jasper. So these folks have been through a lot. They have been very, very patient, very understanding."

Yellowhead County residents return home after an evacuation order due to a wildfire was lifted on Wednesday, May 3, 2023. (CTV News Edmonton)

There are currently three fires that the county considers to be a threat to residents.

Two of the fires are in the Wildwood-Evansburg areas, and the third is in the Shining Bank area north of Highway 32.

"They encompass approximately 15,000 hectares, or about 37, 38,000 acres, and the perimeter around those fires is about 165 to 170 kilometres. The ability to have fire crews on every inch of those areas is impossible. Our crews are working strategically with guidance from our province, with our internal resources and knowledge to attack these fires."

Williams says with the hot weather in the forecast, all county residents should be prepared to leave at any time.

"We don’t know what’s going to happen over the next couple of days with the heat, we’re hoping everything will be good, but just be ready to go in case it’s not."

"I encourage everybody to have an evacuation plan ready to go, your stuff loaded up, and your fuel tanks full in the event that this happens again."

He's asking anyone who sees a new fire to call 911.

Many residents have suggested they'd like to stay behind to fight the fires in their areas themselves.

It's not something the county encourages, but officials admit they can't force anyone to leave.

"We simply do not have the resources to force everybody out of their homes. We will not do that. If somebody stays back, that is their choice, but there is a chance we may not be able to come back to rescue them," said county chief administrative office Luc Mercier.

"There will be no looking at this a different way. We’re going to look at this in exactly the same way, and the first needs to be the safety of our residents."

Mercier said he understands some residents are in a difficult position as they have livestock to care for.

"In our disaster plans, we do account for animals to the degree that we can. We spoke to farmers in the last two weeks, a lot of them, as you say, physically cannot move the animals," he said. "They need to make the choices that they can for themselves. We as a municipality need to focus on human life first."

Yellowhead County officials are expected to provide another update at 2 p.m. on Monday, or sooner if necessary.