Fires in Alaska
NEWS RELEASE
Alaska Interagency Coordination Center
Fort Wainwright, Alaska
01 July, 18:30 hrs
Afternoon Update
Resources: Twenty-six emergency firefighter crews and four Alaskan hotshot crews are committed to fires. A National Type 1 Incident Management Team, ordered for the Boundary Fire, will arrive in Fairbanks tonight. Four hotshot crews from the Lower-48 arrived today and are en-route to the Eagle Complex. Another hotshot crew is en-route tonight to be sent to the Boundary Fire.
Red Flag Warning: The National Weather Service forecasts for strong winds coming out of the northeast, up to 20-30 miles-per-hour, should be ending tonight.
Boundary: The Steese Highway is closed from the Fox Weigh Station while the access road to Haystack off the Elliot is closed. The areas evacuated are Haystack, Bear Den, Olnes East and West, Cleary Summit, Pedro Dome and Vault. Residents between Mile 10 and 28 along the Elliot Highway, including the residents on the Himalaya Road, were asked to have leave before 1:00 p.m. this afternoon. The Goldstream Valley and the area south of Fox are not under evacuation orders.
Fort Hamlin Hills: The fire was very active today. Resources are in place to protect structures at the Hot Spot Cafe, the Seven-Mile Department of Transportation camp, and facilities along the airstrip. The fire is expected to reach airstrip today and may cross the Dalton Highway again, resulting in continued intermittent road closures.
Wolf Creek: The last update on this fire was at 5:45 p.m. The fire was still at least one mile away from where the North Fork and Chena Hot Springs Road meet, burning in the North Fork Drainage. Private landowners and two Fairbanks Area Forestry fire engines are working on structure protection within the first mile of the North Fork Drainage. The fire poses no danger to the Resort at this time. The Upper Chena Dome Trail (50.5 mile), Lower Chena Dome Trail (49.4 mile) and Angel Rocks Trail (49 mile) have been closed until further notice due to fire danger.
Other Information: There were no further updates this afternoon from the Camp Creek Fire, Solstice Complex and Taylor Complex. There is very low visibility in these areas.
The Alaska Interagency Fire Information Center, located at Alaska Fire Service in Fairbanks ((907) 356-5511) is now being staffed 24-hours a day.
Source: Alaska Fire Service
Hundreds evacuated in Alaska wildfire
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) — Hundreds of people fled a wildfire in Alaska’s Interior and headed toward Fairbanks on Thursday, including about 200 workers employed at the state’s largest gold mine north of Fairbanks.
The Fort Knox gold mine employs about 400 people in around-the-clock shifts. About 200 workers were evacuated late Wednesday as mine officials worked on plans to shut down the $600 million operation.
Calls to the gold mine were not immediately returned Thursday morning.
As the winds picked up and the fire danger increased Wednesday afternoon, residents living near the Chatanika Lodge at Mile 28.5 of the Steese Highway were told to evacuate. Those people who had earlier taken refuge at the lodge were told to head to Fairbanks 30 miles to the south, where a shelter was set up at a high school.
Firefighters and Alaska State Troopers went door-to-door and called homes telling residents to pack their stuff and get out.
“We’re being on the conservative side, but we don’t want to take any chances,” said fire information officer Michelle Finch.
The Boundary fire, estimated at 117,000 acres, and the smaller Wolf Creek fire were headed in the general direction of Fairbanks. However, fire officials said it would take several days and continued bad fire conditions to force an evacuation nearer to the city.
“There is no threat to the city of Fairbanks at this time,” said Debby Hassel, acting Fairbanks fire chief. Fairbanks is Alaska’s second-largest city.
The Steese Highway was closed from Pedro Mountain at Mile 17 to the town of Central.
Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski was in Fairbanks to assess the worsening situation for himself.
“I want Alaskans to know that we are aggressively fighting these fires,” Murkowski said.
Murkowski spokesman John Manly said the governor arrived about midnight and was briefed by Fairbanks officials at 2 a.m. Thursday. The governor probably would do a flyover of the fire if conditions permitted, he said.
The evacuation began Tuesday around Mile 42 of the Steese Highway after the fire topped a ridge and began racing toward a subdivision. The fire more than doubled in size overnight, catching firefighters and homeowners off-guard.
Many of the residents fled with a few belongings and their animals to the Chatanika Lodge. But as the fire moved closer Wednesday, they were told to head to Fairbanks.
Lodge owner Ron Franklin refused to leave the lodge, where vintage clothes, guns and furs, as well as mining memorabilia were being taken from the walls in case the place burned.
“I’m sticking here,” Franklin said. “I built this place. This is 32 years of my life.”
A national firefighting management team took over management of the fire on Wednesday.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced Thursday the Boundary fire would be eligible for federal funding of up to 75 percent to pay for firefighting costs.
Eight major fires were burning in Alaska Thursday, over more than 930,000 acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Most were in remote areas of the huge state.
The Alaska fires represented the bulk of the 1 million acres in active fires burning. The agency said so far this fire season, wildfires have scorched 1.67 million acres, more than the 1.3 million acres average over the last 10 years to this date.
Other large fires were burning in Arizona and Nevada.
In Arizona, firefighters worked Thursday to reinforce lines separating a 32,000-acre wildfire from the communities of Payson, Pine and Strawberry. The lightning-caused Willow fire was 5 percent contained and four miles southwest of Payson early Thursday, said Ron Meyer, a spokesman for the crew fighting the fire.
Seventeen buildings, including homes, barns and sheds, were considered threatened by the fire, but no evacuations were expected.
In Nevada a 650-acre complex of range fires was burning on the edge of Reno. No evacuations were ordered, though the fires burned within several hundred yards of about 50 homes.
Forest Service spokeswoman Christie Kalkowski said the fires posed no immediate danger to the homes.
“It is a really slow, creeping fire,” Kalkowski said. However, some fire trucks were held in reserve to protect buildings if necessary.
Source: Casper Stare Tribune (02 July 2004)
Forest fires turn air hazardous in Fairbanks
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — National Weather Service forecaster Aaron Tyburski knew smoke from forest fires had lowered air quality outside his Fairbanks office. What he didn’t count on was the haze following him inside.
He kept cleaning his glasses Monday until he realized that smoke had penetrated the steel-and-glass building.
“We even have reduced visibility from one side of the room to the other,” he said.
A change of wind direction blew smoke from the 55,000-acre Boundary fire 50 miles north of Fairbanks and other blazes into the Fairbanks North Star Borough, creating hazardous air conditions for the 82,000 residents.
The borough’s air quality office warned the elderly and children to stay indoors, and all others to avoid strenuous outdoor activity, after smoke elevated carbon monoxide levels and particulates.
Particulates were in the hazardous category, said Glenn Miller, borough transportation administrative manager. The carbon monoxide level reached 9.1 parts per million, a shade under the federal acceptable maximum of 9.5 parts per million.
Particulates are solids measuring 2.5 microns or smaller.
Typically there are 10 micrograms per cubic meter in Fairbanks, Miller said. Environmental Protection Agency standards are exceeded at 65 micrograms in a 24-hour period and rated hazardous at 350 ppm.
A monitor on the state building in downtown Fairbanks reached 995 micrograms per cubic meter and then “crapped out,” Miller said.
“We’re nearly three times over the hazardous level, and then it stopped working,” Miller said. “We probably had levels that exceeded that.”
Particulates can aggravate respiratory problems for people with lung and heart diseases, Miller said, and cause serious health effects in the general population.
“There’s nothing that we can do to alleviate that other than take precautionary measures,” Miller said.
Tyburski, the weather forecaster, said relief probably was not in sight for the rest of the week.
“It looks like the weather pattern that’s set up will probably keep the smoke in the area for the rest of the week,” Tyburski said.
A high over central Alaska is keeping temperatures in the mid-80s. The high also brought in northeasterly winds Sunday night, lowering visibility to about one-quarter mile.
“It’s very conducive to help those fires to grow and move along,” he said. “If we seen anything, we’ll probably see the winds pick up.”
The Boundary Fire jumped the Steese Highway over the weekend, forcing its closure Sunday night. State Division of Forestry spokeswoman Brett Ricker said late Monday afternoon the highway, which runs between Fairbanks and Circle on the Yukon River, had been reopened to traffic with forestry officials leading vehicles by pilot car between miles 50 and 66.
Much of the fire is in limited suppression areas where firefighters monitor but don’t fight the blaze. One structure in a limited suppression area, a building used as a garage at a mining camp on Sourdough Creek, has burned, Ricker said.
“Suppression efforts are mainly on the southwest corner of the fire,” Ricker said. “That’s where the most structures and homes are near.”
In all, 55 fires are active in Alaska, according to the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center.
One is the 120,660-acre Pingo fire, the largest of the blazes in the Solstice complex of fires near Venetie, a village 160 miles northeast of Fairbanks and 150 miles west of the Canada border.
Crews have connected pumps and hoses to the Chandalar River to help reinforce a 50-foot-wide firebreak surrounding the village of about 200 people, said fire spokesman Tom Kempton at Fort Yukon. The blaze over the weekend had halted about 1.5 miles from the village and had moved no closer Monday, he said.
The Taylor Highway north of Tok remains open to traffic with restrictions. Drivers can expect smoky conditions, long delays and firefighters and equipment on the road, according to the fire coordination center.
The 18,000-acre Camp Creek Fire, burning within 1.5 miles of the Pogo Mine 40 miles northeast of Delta Junction, was staffed with 38 firefighters working to prevent damage to structures.
Story by Dan Joling
Associated Press Writer
Source: Casper Stare Tribune (01 July 2004)
The following image was captured by the ModerateResolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terrasatellite on 01 July 2004.
Terra Satellite
21:40 UTC
01 July 2004
(Image based on data from the MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA-GSFC)
