2004 Alaska Wildfire Upates

[General Max]

Register at the Anchorage Daily News website to get the latest info on wildfire locations and their impacts. http://www.adn.com

 

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (July 16, 7:54 pm ADT) - Temperature inversions continued to hold down many wildfires in Alaska's Interior on Friday, despite thousands of lightning strikes that sparked almost a dozen new fires in one of the state's busiest fire seasons in five decades.

 

 

 

 

General Max

[General Max]

80 homes located 20 miles north of Fairbanks were evacuated Monday night due to the proximity of the 473,000 acre Boundary wildfire.

 

 

General Max

[General Max]

Evidently nobody's concerned about these wildfires if they are taking cruisetours to Alaska in August and September.

 

General Max

[ute_fan]

Thanks for the updates, general. My cruise is over :(, but I have a neighbor who is doing a land only trip in Alaska this week. I don't remember where she was going, but I know she was spending a fair amount of time in Anchorage. I'm hoping the fires haven't ruined her trip.

[General Max]

I think Anchorage is fine but there are fires burning rather close to Fairbanks.

 

FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS FROM 7/21/04 ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS

 

 

 

 

Even as firefighters worked to keep the state's biggest wildfires out of Fairbanks and several smaller communities and fire managers juggled their meager resources, a relatively tiny blaze near Tok got the full treatment Monday: smoke jumpers, air tankers, helicopters and hotshots.

 

"Because the last thing we want right now is another 30,000-acre fire," Tok-based information officer Kevin Koechlein said. "We don't have enough (resources) in this state to ramp up for another big fire. So the idea is to stop them while they're small."

 

With vast areas of the Interior still parched and primed for ignition, hitting new fires hard has become a priority. It can mean temporarily redirecting firefighters and aircraft away from other fires, Pete Buist of the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center said.

 

"But in these conditions you need to put those types and numbers of resources on a fire right at the beginning just to make sure it doesn't get any bigger," he said.

 

Typically, the Alaska fire season dies down in July as rains increase. That heavy precipitation hasn't started yet, Buist said.

 

Instead, the eastern Interior has gotten scattered showers, often accompanied by thunderstorms and erratic winds that can spawn new fires or blow old ones to life.

 

That happened Monday north of Fairbanks, when winds fanned the Boundary fire toward two subdivisions on Haystack Mountain, off the Elliott Highway. In a matter of hours, the flames ran nearly five miles and breached a fire line bulldozed earlier.

 

Thick smoke made it impossible for firefighters to know where the fire was, so crews were pulled out, which prompted officials to evacuate the subdivisions.

 

"Anytime it's not safe for firefighters," Buist said, "it's obviously not safe for homeowners."

 

Firefighters returned to the Haystack area Tuesday. Still unable to see the fire, they probed the bulldozer lines looking for hot spots and sparks to extinguish, and they widened the line where they could, Buist said.

 

In the meantime, the evacuation order remained in place. Fourteen individuals stayed overnight at a north Fairbanks middle school set up as an emergency shelter by the American Red Cross.

 

The same weather conditions that fanned the Boundary fire into action pushed heavy smoke into Fairbanks, which boosted the air quality index into the "unhealthy" range, Jim McCormick of the Fairbanks-North Star Borough said.

 

"We've had a lot of calls," he said. The borough is telling elders, children and people with heart and lung problems to avoid prolonged or heavy exertion.

 

The smoky skies are annoying, McCormick said, but far better than they were when the Boundary fire first roared toward Fairbanks in late June. Three weeks ago, he measured as many as 1,000 micrograms of smoke particles per cubic meter of air. On Tuesday, the count was 291 micrograms.

 

Half a dozen other communities are also threatened by fires and annoyed by smoke. The Chicken fire, which has grown to 255,000 acres, had crept to within four miles of its namesake village on the Taylor Highway, and managers were making contingency plans for evacuation.

 

"It's not like it's an imminent threat," information officer Virginia Gibbons said. "We're making preparations because it's appropriate to."

 

Up the highway in Eagle, dense smoke finally lifted Monday to give firefighters their first look at nearby fires in several days, information officer Greg Kujawa said. The Deer Creek fire is the nearest, about six miles away, and continues to threaten the Yukon River village, but the town is protected by bulldozer lines, portable water tanks, sprinklers and hoses, he said.

 

To the west, fires near Circle and Central on the Steese Highway continue to smolder. The smoke, higher humidity and intermittent showers have helped keep the blazes at a bay but also prevented airplanes and helicopters from attacking the flames, fire officials said.

 

Some of the most active fires in Alaska this week are along the Alaska Highway. More than 1,000 lightning strikes hit near Tok on Sunday, and by Monday one of them spawned a new fire in the black spruce forest less than two miles north of the highway and six miles east of Northway Junction.

 

While managers of the Taylor complex were already busy with fires near Tok, Dot Lake and Northway, "they hit the new fire with everything they had," information officer Kris Eriksen said. An air tanker dropped retardant while more than a dozen smoke jumpers and a hotshot crew from Wyoming fought the fire on the ground.

 

In spite of the initial attack, the blaze ripped through the tinder-dry country and grew to nearly 100 acres by Tuesday afternoon, she said.

 

Now called the Yarger Lake fire, the blaze is just one more draw on personnel, aircraft and equipment around Tok, Eriksen said. Luckily, the fire is moving away from the Alaska Highway and the village of Northway.

 

But fire officials are talking with residents of Northway and Northway Junction about evacuation plans just in case, and fire engines are patrolling the highway and road to the village.

 

The Porcupine fire north of Tok continues to burn actively in several spots, and heavy smoke remains a concern at times for residents and firefighters.

 

As the fire season continues, the Alaska National Guard has joined the fight, volunteering the use of six helicopters and two C-23 Sherpa airplanes plus nearly 20 trucks and tracked vehicles and a mobile radio system.

 

"Clearly, our firefighters are doing their best," guard spokesman Maj. Mike Haller said in a written statement, "but these fires are not at all close to being in hand."

 

 

 

 

General Max

[General Max]

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS FROM THE 7/22/04 ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hillside remains a tinderbox despite recent rainfall, lower temperatures

TREE REMOVAL: Workers remove fuel to provide buffer around homes.

 

 

By PETER PORCO

Anchorage Daily News

 

(Published: July 22, 2004)

 

Adam Hoke takes a chain saw to a dead spruce tree while Adam Eley watches it come down. Both firefighters are part of the Pioneer Peak fire crew that was thinning fuel from the Anchorage Hillside near Birch Road on Wednesday. (Photo by Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News)

 

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Click on photo to enlarge

On July 7, temperatures in Anchorage rose into the 80s, and relative humidity, the amount of water in the air, fell to 39 percent.

 

When it's that hot and dry, all you need on the Hillside is a wind and a spark to set off the kind of catastrophic wildland fire predicted by computer models, according to city and state fire authorities.

 

So how do conditions stand two weeks later, with a little rain having fallen, high temperatures nearly 15 degrees lower and the relative humidity up past 60 percent in midday?

 

Are the Hillside and other forested areas of the city out of danger?

 

No, fire officials said. Not even close.

 

"We're not out of the woods," said Tom Kempton, a spokesman for the Anchorage Fire Department. "We'll need several days of heavy, wetting rain."

 

Because of that, the city continues to send two-person patrol rigs to the Hillside and to keep a state-owned helicopter on standby in Anchorage in the event that retardant needs to be dropped quickly on a fire.

 

Workers, meanwhile, continue to reduce fire fuels by thinning out stands of trees adjacent to Hillside homes and by cutting down dead and dying spruce, some healthy ones too.

 

The Pioneer Peak firefighters, an Alaska Division of Forestry crew from the Mat-Su area, was back on the Hillside on Wednesday after more than two weeks in the Interior fighting the massive Boundary fire.

 

Thousands of acres on the Hillside and in Eagle River were swept by the white-spruce-killing bark beetle in the last dozen or more years. City and state agencies, abetted by federal grants, have been whacking away at the dead lumber since 1999.

 

This is the fourth season the 20-person Pioneer Peak crew is doing fuel mitigation work in Hillside parks and neighborhoods, said Norm McDonald, a Division of Forestry operations foreman.

 

Other crews, like the privately funded Tazlina Hotshots, have been cutting down dead trees since 1999, although right now the hotshots are fighting fires in the Interior, officials said.

 

On Wednesday, the Pioneer Peak crew was back in a subdivision along Nenana Place, south of Huffman Road and east of Birch Road. It had been working there at the end of June, when it was called to battle fires up north.

 

Several Hillside homeowners were invited by the Anchorage Fire Department to arrange to have the crews come and create buffers on their properties, McDonald said. The service is paid for by the federal grants, not the homeowners, fire officials said.

 

The idea behind culling dead and fire-vulnerable timber is that any wildland fire that managed to work its way into the crown of a dense forest would slow down and fall to the ground once it reached those stands, according to McDonald.

 

The "shaded fuel break" gives firefighters a chance to attack the blaze, McDonald said.

 

Several members of the Pioneer Peak crew who were interviewed Wednesday said they liked their work and believed fuel mitigation would indeed help crews get control of a wildland fire.

 

"This is a valuable resource," Jon Majors said as he refueled a chain saw Wednesday afternoon and got ready to cut down another tree on a large piece of private property.

 

Majors, 30, is from Eagle River and works in the admitting office at Alaska Regional Hospital during the off-season. He was paired with Sven Haltmann, a 27-year-old Swiss immigrant and dog musher from Willow.

 

The two and more than a dozen others were felling spruce trees as tall as 75 feet and as short as 4 feet, cutting off limbs and bucking up the logs, thinning a strip of forest 80 feet wide that circled several large homes. Beyond the strip was dense forest leading uphill to a subdivision west of Hillside Drive.

 

The idea, the men said, was to put 10 to 15 feet of space between every couple of trees.

 

"This will open up things in here and give it a better look," Majors said.

 

The piles of bucked-up rounds will be used for firewood by the landowners or someone else. The city gets lots of calls from people wanting the rounds and puts them in touch with those who have logs to spare, said Michelle Weston, a forester with the Anchorage Fire Department.

 

The slash piles -- the spruce branches and twigs -- remained extremely dry. They are sure evidence, McDonald said, that the recent showers had hardly reduced their flammability. He grabbed a handful of twigs and crushed them. They shattered into pieces and set off a small cascade of dust.

 

"That's the stuff you start campfires with," McDonald said.

 

Crews will burn the slash piles after the fall rains, McDonald said. While they're a fire danger at present, there's lots of space between them and the bucked-up rounds, so a fire could not easily jump between them.

 

Some Hillsiders say the culling is going too slowly and too many dead trees remain. The city is not spending its fire-fighting dollars wisely, a few complained Tuesday evening to the Anchorage Assembly, which voted to accept the most recent federal fire-mitigation grant of $6.14 million.

 

McDonald says crews set priorities, and have been doing so since 1999.

 

"There's a lot of dead trees," he said. "It's unrealistic to drop every beetle-killed tree in the woods."

 

Therefore, McDonald said, crews will attack areas where children are likely to play or homeless people may camp, and they will target certain fuel types, he said.

 

Among the most critical areas for thinning are stands of black spruce, like that around one of the homes on Nenana Place, and continuous strings of beetle-killed white spruce.

 

The crews over the years have thinned some "bad areas," he said. Chief among those were the north side of the Rabbit Creek drainage; stands of black spruce and beetle-killed white spruce in Bear Valley, where crews created 40-foot fire breaks on either side of Clark's Road, the only route into and out of the area; and Forsythe Park on Birch Road.

 

The forest is changing, and for the better, McDonald said. The birch, willow and alder that remain are hardwoods and more resistant to fire.

 

Last year, the Pioneer Crew worked from May 1 through the end of November, with a brief interruption to fight fires elsewhere in the state, McDonald said. They'll be going strong into the fall again this year.

 

Daily News reporter Peter Porco can be reached at pporco@adn.com or 257-4582. Reporter Anne Aurand contributed to this story.

 

 

 

 

General Max

[Krazy4Kruisin']

From the Houston Chronicle newspaper today:

 

July 22, 2004, 6:13AM

 

Smoke from Alaskan fires adds to Houston's hazy days

Irritants travel long distances at high altitude

By RAD SALLEE

Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

NORTHERN BLAZE

• Burning --3.5 million acres (about 5,500 square miles)

 

• Firefighting -- Limited because of few roads, small population; most fires allowed to burn out

 

• Prospect -- Long Arctic summer days mean less nighttime humidity, favorable fire conditions

 

That stinging in the eyes and nose during the past several days was caused mostly by ozone, the usual homegrown pollutant that thrives in a Houston summer. But other airborne irritants traveled a long way to get here.

 

 

High-altitude winds ferried smoke from enormous forest fires in Alaska and northern Canada all the way to South Texas and Louisiana, said Bryan Lambeth, senior meteorologist with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

 

The haze blew in on the weekend's cool front and had mostly cleared out of the Houston area by Wednesday.

 

During its stay, Lambeth said, most of the particles remained above 6,000 feet and provided some relief from the sun. But some drifted to the ground and added to the general respiratory misery, as a stagnant air mass over Southeast Texas kept the pot boiling.

 

The worst came Tuesday, when high ozone levels drove the air quality index for Harris County to the red (unhealthy) level and fine particle pollution was in the upper-moderate range.

 

Readings at local air quality monitoring stations had improved late Wednesday afternoon, after winds had reversed. By then, 24 Harris County monitors read in the green (good) range, with five in the yellow (moderate).

 

Lambeth said he cannot recall smoke reaching Houston from Alaska in the past, but it may have happened. Once the particles reach the upper atmosphere, they can travel a long way. This smoke was carried along by the jet stream, a fluctuating band of fast, high-altitude air currents.

 

"Last spring there were huge fires in Russia near Lake Baikal that circled the globe," Lambeth said. Smoke from those fires did not reach Houston.

 

Recent fires in New Mexico caused smoke to drift over West Texas but did not cause pollution at ground level except in the El Paso area, he said.

 

Each spring, Houstonians may see smoke from agricultural burnoff as farmers clear land for crops in southeastern Mexico and Central America.

 

"That was not very bad this year, but it was pretty bad two years ago," Lambeth said.

[General Max]

Krazy4kruisin, I wonder why there aren't more discussion threads on this. A lot of the land tours in Alaska in July and August will be impacted.

 

General Max

[General Max]

Following article is from the Anchorage Daily News on 7/23/04.

 

By DAN JOLING

The Associated Press

 

(Published: July 23, 2004)

 

 

 

 

Seven firefighters were hurt Thursday when a tracked vehicle rolled over as it transported a crew to the Boundary fire north of Fairbanks, fire information officers said.

 

Four firefighters were taken to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital by helicopter, and three others were taken by ground transport, fire information officer Miera Crawford said.

 

But a hospital nursing supervisor said only six firefighters were seen in the emergency room. One was admitted to the hospital and five were discharged, she said. The discrepancy could not immediately be resolved.

 

The rollover occurred about 12:30 p.m. as a Small Unit Support Vehicle, a covered, tracked vehicle, traveled cross country over hilly terrain to an assigned work area. The work area was in the southernmost part of the fire somewhere off miles 20 to 25 Steese Highway, Crawford said.

 

Crawford had no information on where the firefighters were from.

 

The Boundary fire, covering 485,600 acres, is the agency's No. 2 priority. Containment was estimated at 20 percent, and an evacuation directive remains in effect for the Haystack subdivision about a mile east of Mile 10.5 Elliott Highway and about 20 miles north of Fairbanks.

 

Firefighters spent Thursday doing burnouts and reinforcing a fire line along the western flank of the fire near the Haystack subdivision.

 

The controlled burning was slowed, as was growth of the fire, by light afternoon rain that fell for about two hours, Crawford said.

 

New fires continue to be the highest priority for firefighters attacking Interior Alaska forest blazes.

 

"If we can hit them hard and keep them small, they don't get away from us and become big fires," fire information officer Gil Knight said at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks.

 

As of Thursday afternoon, 11 new fires had been detected in the previous 24 hours. Half were blamed on lightning and half on humans, Knight said. Most were less than one acre.

 

The largest was a thousand-acre fire six miles west of Circle and 160 miles northeast of Fairbanks at the end of the Steese Highway. The fire, named Big Bluff, was moving away from the Yukon River community of about 100.

 

"It wasn't ripping," Knight said. "It wasn't moving at a great rate of speed."

 

The fire had been detected earlier from the air with infrared equipment but was not confirmed by a ground crew until smoke lifted. The fire was moving into an area that burned in 1991.

 

"We look at it as a good thing, because it only has 13 years of fuel," Knight said.

 

Waiting to take on new fires are 15 initial attack crews, Knight said.

 

"That's in addition to whatever initial attack resources the regions might have," he said.

 

With up to 20 firefighters, the supplemental crews are hustled out by bus or other means when a report of a fire comes in. The initial attack crews carry few items for an extended stay, such as camping gear, but much of the regular firefighting equipment, such as shovels and flappers, devices that resemble a rubber bath mat on a stick.

 

"You flop it, whop it, smack it," suffocating flames, Knight said.

 

Elsewhere, rain kept fire growth down throughout the Interior, he said.

 

"There's nothing on the board right now that indicates any major problems in the fires," Knight said.

 

Alaska this summer has had 489 fires, including 122 still active, that have burned more than 3.9 million acres, Knight said.

[General Max]

Someone might be interested in the following but I just noticed that it expires tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

Midnight Sun Express rail packages featuring the Mt. McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge available at Two for One prices. Packages start from just $129 per person, double occupancy.

Midnight Sun Express rail packages combine the thrill of rail travel with the comfort of one of our Denali area wilderness lodge, Mt. McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge. Begin your getaway in Anchorage or Fairbanks and spend one of more nights at the Mt. McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge in Denali State Park. Alaska’s best rail experience, the Midnight Sun Express rail cars feature wrap-around glass ULTRA DOME ceilings and unobstructed views of Alaska’s spectacular scenery.

 

$129 Midnight Sun Express package fare based on one night, standard room, double occupancy and includes round trip transportation between Anchorage and Mt. McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge, transfers to/from the depot to the lodge and baggage handling. Taxes additional. Based on availability, subject to restrictions, capacity controlled. Offer cannot be combined with any other discounts or promotions. Promotion valid through July 31, 2004.

 

general max

[General Max]

http://www.adn.com

 

General Max

[General Max]

A helicopter aided in the attack on a small brush fire in South Anchorage late Tuesday. The fire, which originated in a small clubhouse in the trees built by youngsters, was quickly extinguished.

 

General Max

[General Max]

No current update available from adn. Te wildfires must not be causing any major problems now to populated areas.

 

General Max

[General Max]

Fires have seemed to be less a problem now. Here is an interesting article about North Korean missiles reaching Alaska.

 

 

N. Korea could hit Shemya

MISSILES: Extreme range puts the tip of the Aleutians within striking distance.

 

 

By SAM BISHOP

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

 

(Published: August 9, 2004)

 

General Max

 

 

 

 

WASHINGTON -- North Korea is close to deploying a new land-based mobile missile with a maximum range that just reaches the western end of the Aleutian Islands, according to reports this week in Jane's Defence Weekly and The New York Times.

 

A Pentagon spokesman Thursday said he couldn't confirm the specifics, but he said it is well known that North Korea has been developing long-range missiles for years.

 

"While I cannot confirm information that might disclose matters of intelligence, I can tell you that the United States will continue to work closely with other like-minded countries to address North Korea's missile efforts," said Lt. Cmdr. Alvin "Flex" Plexico, press officer for Pacific region issues in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for public affairs.

 

The Jane's article, which did not identify its sources, said North Korea is close to deploying two missiles -- one land based that can be moved on roads and another submarine based.

 

The land-based missile has a maximum range of about 2,485 miles, according to Jane's.

 

That puts all of mainland Alaska and much of the Aleutian Islands out of range. Fairbanks and Anchorage are both about 3,700 miles from central North Korea.

 

Adak Island, where the military plans to station a mobile X-band radar on a converted oil drilling platform for the national missile defense system next year, is about 2,850 miles away.

 

The only Alaska military installation within the missile's reported range is on Shemya Island, which lies at the western end of the Aleutian Islands about 2,400 miles from North Korea. The Defense Department operates the Cobra Dane long-range radar there. It is being upgraded for use with the missile defense system.

 

The New York Times quoted an unidentified U.S. official saying the new land-based missile couldn't reach the U.S. "mainland."

 

The submarine-based missile described by Jane's has a range of 1,500 miles. However, the Times said U.S. officials doubt the North Korean military has a submarine capable of getting that close to the United States with the missile.

 

Jane's said the North Korean military obtained 12 scrapped Russian subs from a Japanese company starting in 1993.

 

The North Korean program has been cited as one justification for the U.S. national missile defense system. Six years ago, North Korea launched a missile over Japan. Some defense experts claim part of the missile reached Alaska or Alaska waters, though no official confirmation of that assertion has been made.

 

Others, though, see the current missile defense system as a poor response to the North Korean threat.

 

"A limited missile-defense system -- which is the most we can expect over the next decade -- is more likely to multiply than nullify this threat," Slate online magazine's military columnist Fred Kaplan said in a July 27 opinion piece.

 

Kaplan said the United States essentially has entered a mini-arms race with North Korea. It only needs to produce offensive missiles at a rate somewhat below the U.S. production of missile interceptors to stay ahead strategically.

 

Plexico said North Korea isn't improving its position by developing long-range missiles.

 

"We have repeatedly made clear that these developments do not enhance North Korea's security in any way and only add to North Korea's estrangement from the international community and its neighbors in particular," Plexico said in a prepared statement.

[General Max]

No updates this morning.

 

General Max

[Yukon]

The smoke problem changes by the day (hour, perhaps). Three days ago the smoke was bad all the way from Fairbanks down the Alaska Highway to the Yukon border. Today it's bad at Dawson and is reported to be the same all the way to Dawson. Very hot weather is re-igniting a lot of "dead" fires (temps here (Dawson) hit the high 80s a few days ago again.

 

Murray