As Alaska’s wildfire season ramps up, fire officials say the Interior is facing high heat and dry conditions that already have the state requesting Outside crews and aircraft.
Beth Ipsen, a spokeswoman with the federal Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska Fire Service, said Tuesday that about 100 smokejumpers from the Lower 48 are currently in state to fight Alaska wildfires.
“Those are the firefighters, the very experienced firefighters that parachute out of airplanes,” Ipsen said. “They’re (the) ones that we use predominantly for that initial response to fires, especially in remote locations.”
By Tuesday, firefighters were dealing with more than 100 wildfires statewide, many of them in the Interior. The fires are burning about 130,000 acres total, mostly in remote areas. There have been no reports of damage to cabins or other structures, though residents in a couple areas have been told to be ready to evacuate.
Right now, the McDonald Fire is the state’s largest. It had grown to more than 54,000 acres by Tuesday morning and was burning on military land across the Tanana River from Salcha. Officials said the fire is “advancing from treetop to treetop in some areas” through quick-burning black spruce, with 83 firefighters and support personnel working to contain it.
“It’s still west of the Tanana River and we’d like to keep it there, because on the other side of the Tanana River are Salcha, Harding Lake and a lot of homes,” Ipsen said.
More than 10,000 lightning strikes were recorded across the state on Sunday and Monday, according to Ipsen, causing a string of fires north of Fairbanks along the Chatanika River. The Fairbanks North Star Borough has issued a Level 2 evacuation-preparedness notice for residents in the area – the second in the “Ready, Set, Go” sequence for approaching wildfires.
The numerous wildfires are affecting Interior driving conditions, with state transportation officials urging motorists in the region to drive with headlights on. Fairbanks public radio station KUAC reported Monday that smoke is also producing air quality advisories in Fairbanks and other parts of the Interior.
In Southcentral Alaska, fire danger has been markedly lower this year, according to Ipsen.
Ipsen said the region has seen traditionally lower temperatures than the Interior, as well as occasional rains. Although more than 1,000 lightning strikes were recorded in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough on Sunday, a small fire near the Willow Airport had burned less than an acre by Monday.
Ipsen said that according to climatologist Rick Thoman, Alaska remains below average so far this year for acreage burned by wildfires. She credited that initial success to quick attacks by fire crews, especially smokejumpers delivered by helicopter in “helitack” flights.
“But we’re getting into the time of the year where with the sustained dry weather, it’s drying the deeper ground layers out, and we’re starting to see some of those fires being a little bit harder to get a handle on,” she said. “And that will continue if we continue to have that hot, dry weather – there’s no big rain forecast in sight.”
Dry conditions in the Lower 48 could also cause the fire crews and support aircraft currently helping Alaska-based firefighters to be called elsewhere, Ipsen said.
Ipsen said Alaska is unique in having a relatively low proportion of wildfires started by people, about 60% versus 80% in the Lower 48. She said Alaskans can assist fire crews by keeping it that way.
“We’re pretty thankful that there hasn’t been a lot of impacts with human-caused fires,” she said. “It’s been mostly lightning-caused fires lately, so we can just have people help us out with that.”
Homeowners can also make homes more resilient to wildfires by cleaning gutters and limbing nearby spruce trees, Ipsen said.
