Two new reports on last year’s devastating wildfire in Jasper, Alta., confirm the blaze was caused by lightning and accelerated by “tornado-force fire-generated” winds and dry conditions.

The fire, which started as three separate blazes before merging as one, hit town two days after starting and destroyed a third of the community’s structures in July 2024. It forced 25,000 residents and visitors to flee and displaced an estimated 2,000 people.

The reports, commissioned by Parks Canada, say efforts to reduce fuel for wildfires, including prescribed burns, helped mitigate the blaze.

But one of the reports, which looks at how the fire formed and developed, says more burns and other attempts to reduce fuel would have been beneficial, since the fire began in an area south of town that had no

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