When the locals at the west of Jasper, Alta., Returned to their homes last August, suddenly felt a great distance from their small mountain city.
Some have called the “Republic of Stone Mountain” to the area, a reference to the name of the multifamily village that is still in a neighborhood level by a fire whipped by the wind that destroyed a third of the city a year ago.
A large gravel land well is where there were once dozen houses that covered several blocks.
The house dressed in Lee Declercq is in a back corner with four other houses that survived the fire.
He believes that his home should have burned, calling him a “wooden phosphorus.”
“It was just luck,” says Declercq.
Although these houses resisted the flames and the abrasing temperatures of the fire, the life of those who live there have been dramatically altered.
From its high porch, Declercq observes the excavators to roll around the gravel well while the hummingbirds go and go from a feeder that hangs from the deck of the roof.
The blackened exterior of the wooden lining and the home of the house reveals how close the rustic flames he has shared with his wife, Betsy, since 1982.
The fire destroyed 358 houses and structures in Jasper.
Changing winds and sprinklers
“Sometimes I almost cry when I look out and see people who survey their burned properties,” says the 76 -year -old retired railway.
He considers much of his life in a fairy tale: the concept of his home began in the mid -1970s while he and his wife, just in love, dreamed of building a house on the empty slope looking at the rocky mountains.
“We sat on this slope on a rock, holding hands, thinking: ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could have a house here?”
That his home resisted the flames is not quite a miracle, says Jasper’s fire chief Mathew Conte.
Much of his destiny was issued by Declercq’s decision to turn on a sprinkler of the roof when an evacuation order was issued on July 22, 2024, says Conte. Around 5,000 residents and 20,000 visitors were forced to flee.
Declercq says he transported his ladder on the side of the house and dragged through the pure slope to turn it on, soaking the property without stopping for two days before the fire reached the city.
“His property was quite moistened by his sprinklers,” Conte told a group of reporters earlier this week.
Jasper’s volunteer firefighters had also established a long line of sprinkle around the edge of the city, Conte said, and the wind patterns quickly moved away the flames of that group of houses.
He said that the entire neighborhood would have been decimated if Declercq’s house got into flames and extended.
‘A miracle for me’
Darrell Savage, a railway worker who lives at three Declercq doors, says that the name of the “Republic of Stone Mountain” began to circulate when the evacuees returned.
“It’s very separated from Jasper now,” Savage said.
With the exception of a single street lamp that has been shining 24 hours a day from the fire, Savage said the street is black at night.
He said he felt guilty as one of the few in his neighborhood that returned to a stable situation.
“You definitely feel you don’t deserve it,” said Savage. “Anyone’s house could have survived, right?
“Why did these survive?”
Savage said he has not talked to firefighters and that he does not understand why his home is still standing.
“I don’t know. It seems like a miracle.”
