The road to recovery is starting to clear for businesses in Jasper, Alta., a month after some 25,000 visitors and residents were forced to flee a raging wildfire.
While Jasper National Park and the town are still closed to visitors, on Friday the park service announced that it had reopened the road south through the Rocky Mountains that is a key draw for tourists.
SunDog restarted its shuttle route from Edmonton to Jasper on Friday as well, though for now it's just for residents and workers, said Hardy.There are signs of reopening in town, too. The grocery store, pharmacy and gas stations were open to welcome residents who started returning a week ago, while the Crazy Elk Cafe also opened for residents on Friday, said Hardy.
Robbins is closely aware of the devastation of the fire; her home is one of only four left on her street. An earlier survey conducted by the Tourism Industry Association of Alberta gave some sense of scale, estimating daily revenue losses as high as $4.5 million a day during the peak summer months. It also showed an urgent need for housing and staff accommodation support with more than half saying they'd need help.
Mairead Colbath and her husband run Colbath Design Ltd., an interior design company that also provides permitting services, a process that gets tricky when building in a national park.
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