SUNDRE – A member of the Sundre Volunteer Search and Rescue Society was among others from across Alberta to let his name stand alongside those willing to be on-call to provide assistance wherever and whenever needed.
Noah Bradley arrived in Jasper at about 9 a.m. on Tuesday, July 23 following a wildfire evacuation order that had been issued overnight.
“When I was driving through, there was smouldering fire on both sides of Highway 16,” he said.
That morning, RCMP say 20 members from various branches of Search and Rescue (SAR) Alberta helped RCMP members conducted door-to-door checks of every residence in the Jasper townsite.
Working in teams of two, one RCMP member and one SAR volunteer, they methodologically moved through the town and documented those who had yet to evacuate," RCMP said in a Friday update.
Initial door knocks occurred between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., with 41 residents electing to stay in place, RCMP said.
By the time Bradley and other search and rescue members including a volunteer from Rocky Mountain House rolled into Jasper, the popular tourist hotspot and mountain getaway in the Canadian Rockies had already largely become a ghost town.
“The town had been evacuated. But we were just walking around the community to make sure that people had evacuated or were safe,” he said.
“The nature of an evacuation is there are – for any number of reasons – always people who may still be behind,” he told the Albertan on July 24.
“So, we just do due diligence to make sure that everyone’s safe,” he said.
From about 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., he and other volunteers were conducting door-to-door checks.
“There were a few people,” he said, adding all of those he interacted with were making final arrangements before heading out of town.
“The people I talked to, they were planning on leaving very quickly.”
RCMP said later in the day, after a second check-in, only six residents remained.
"Eventually only one elderly couple remained, who’s health and mobility issues precluded them from leaving town independently. It took two members 30 minutes to help evacuate the couple. Their home was destroyed shortly there after," RCMP said in the Friday update.
Bradley headed back out immediately following the long 12-hour shift and was home by about midnight.
Although Bradley now lives in Olds, the 29-year-old grew up in Sundre and graduated from Sundre High School in 2013. He joined Sundre SAR in 2021 and is now a team leader and technology director with the organization.
Concurrent to the door-to-door checks, RCMP said in the Friday update that Tactical Support Group (TSG) members from Sherwood Park, Parkland, Fort Saskatchewan, Okotoks, Innisfail, Lloydminster, Coaldale, and High Level RCMP detachments converged onto the townsite to help facilitate evacuations and to secure the highways into the national park.
