(Bloomberg) -- The Alberta town of Jasper and the picturesque Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies are under an evacuation order as a wildfire rages in the eastern section of the park.
Everyone in Jasper and the park were ordered to evacuate late Monday by driving west on Highway 16 to neighboring British Columbia due to the threat of the Utopia blaze.
Jasper, just north of Banff National Park, has about 4,000 residents though it is visited by millions of tourists from around the world each year to see its mountains, glaciers and wildlife. The newly expanded Trans Mountain oil pipeline also passes through Jasper.
“We continue to safely operate the pipeline and have deployed sprinkler protection for the station as a preventative measure,” Trans Mountain said in an email.
Listen on Zero: The 21st Century Will Be Shaped by Destructive ‘Fire Weather’
Alberta and British Columbia are facing a outbreak of wildfires amid a heat wave in Western Canada. A total of 7,500 people in Alberta alone were evacuated as of Monday afternoon from rural communities. Fires have also prompted Suncor Energy Inc. to curtail oil production at its Firebag oil sands site, one of the largest oil sands well sites that produced more than 230,000 barrels a day in June.
(Adds Trans Mountain comment on pipeline in fourth paragraph)
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