It's on our local news that a town by Fairbanks is being totally evacuated due to fire. Anybody here in trouble?

Ed

 

Yeah...it's a very small town...about 100 people.

But yeah...it's been pretty smokey up there for the past week and a half...maybe 2 weeks...just depends on which way the wind blows. Last week was a killer for hot dry temps up there! 80's and 90's around Fairbanks and windy. 2 weeks ago they said the temp in Tok (another small town) was 104...eek!

Check out what our news says...

http://www.ktuu.com

http://www.adn.com

You'll have to sign up for that last link, but it doesn't cost anything and they don't send you any spam.

 

I went through Fairbanks twice last week flying out to a few bush communities. Smoke is so thick it burned your eyes walking across the tarmac. 1/4 mile visibility. It looked like fog inside the airport lobby. Life really sucks for those folks right now.

 

The weathermen have been reporting the smoke over Michigan here. Theyve been explaining the differance between the smoke and clouds, when both were visible.

 

They were only evacuating those that have things like Athsma or CP problems- but it is very bad. It will probably go 2 million acres burned before it is finished- it is already over 1.7 million last I looked!

 

Some burns are good for the land. How is this one classified?

 

Well, all the trees that burn in this fire are not really any use for logging or industry, and if there is a minimum of property damage, it will be a good thing really, as there won't be another fire in that area possible for another hunderd years, it will be a natural fire break. In about 5 years all that area will be really beautiful as the forest changes the page of it's appearance. Lot's of Birch will replace the spruce in the more southern areas.

Forest fires are generally healthy for the forest, as they wipe out the spruce beatles and aphids, mosquitoes as well, it is the property damage to humans that is the bummer, and since Alaska is mostly unpopulated, all the effort goes towards protecting property and turning the fire away from inhabited area, not to really putting the fire out.

 

Thanks, that's the answer I was looking for.

 

are there really only 100 people in fairbanks?

i did a delivery to a tdr guy up in delta junction in march....

i couldn't stop thinking how awesome it'd be to have a dedicated route from somewhere from the the continental US up to alaska going back and forth... fun stuff... really awesome.

anyway, hope everyone is OKAY up in the smoke there. i heard about this as well.

 

no...there are like 70,000 people in the Fairbanks area. The fires made it to about 13 miles north of Fairbanks...but you gotta remember...these fires they're talking about are individual hotspots that are spread out over a 400 mile radius! There are several tiny villages interspersed in that whole area...mostly natives live there. The evacuations you heard about were mostly 1 1/2 hrs northeast of Fairbanks and closer.

 

Right- Alaska fires aren't like "lower 48" fires- there is not just one giant roaring wall of fire miles across. It goes through fingers of spruce mostly.

 

Quick update on the fires up here. Since most of you probably don't want to sign up for the privilege to see the articles on www.adn.com, I've copied and pasted today's article. They said 2.3 million acres is about the size of Delaware and Rhode Island put together.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fourth biggest fire season will soon be third
2.9 MILLION ACRES: Blazes right along highways are a big change.


By JOEL GAY
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: July 15, 2004)

Zach Spence of Bettles watched the Evansville fire from atop his Beaver floatplane Tuesday. That fire, which has been burning away from town, doubled in size to 36,000 acres from Monday to Wednesday.

To the north, the entire ridge of the East Crazy Mountains was burning, she said, a rim of orange under blackened skies.

In the flatlands to the west, "it looked like a tornado, a huge, black smoke cloud towering up like cumulonimbus clouds," she said. "I just about died. I didn't know which way it was going."

The fires bearing down on Circle Hot Springs and its Steese Highway neighbors, Circle and Central, are only the latest threats as Alaska's fire season continues to burn at a near-record pace, affecting a broad swath of the state.

Smoke from the fires discolored the air in Anchorage on Wednesday and limited visibility to a quarter mile in Tok, some 270 miles to the east. The threat of fires pushed residents of several communities into the woods with chain saws and bulldozers to protect their homes and lands.

And no end is in sight, said Pete Buist of the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center in Fairbanks. A few days ago, he said, the acreage burned in the 2004 fire season was the fifth highest since record keeping began in 1950.

"Now we're in fourth place and advancing on third," he said Wednesday, with no major rainstorms in the forecast to dampen the blazes.

From the Canada border to Fairbanks, and from high above the Arctic Circle to the Alaska Highway, almost 2.9 million acres of Interior Alaska have burned -- far from the record of 5 million acres but a big year nevertheless.

The location of the fires has made this an extraordinary year for firefighters, Buist said.

"We always get big acreages, but usually it's completely out in the Bush, off the road. This year we have five large fires burning right on the highways," he said.

In most years, firefighting personnel and aircraft are called up from the Lower 48 to battle Alaska blazes. This year, for the first time ever, Alaska asked for additional fire engines.

Fifteen are on their way, said Callie Berg of the Alaska Fire Service. They're not hook-and-ladders or bulky tankers but brush rigs, outfitted for rural work. Each carries a small water tank, several hundred feet of hose and a two-person crew. They'll be especially helpful patrolling remote roads and communities, she said.

The engines are coming up from Idaho and Montana on low-boy tractor-trailer rigs and should arrive later this week, Berg said. The first five will be dropped off around Tok to help with the 135,000-acre Porcupine fire.

That's good news to the people of Tanacross, an Athabascan village about 10 miles west of Tok. Though their village isn't in danger yet, the Tanacross tribe has asked for state and federal help in protecting village residents' remote hunting and fishing cabins as little as a mile from the fire's western edge, tribal president Jerry Isaac said.

So far, their request has been denied, Isaac said. "They told me they're stretched thin. That's understandable," he said. "The whole state is pretty much on fire."

But it's frustrating, Isaac said, because the fire might have been attacked earlier and not been allowed to grow. Now there are fires all over the eastern Interior, and the Tanacross lands aren't yet a priority.

Rather than stand by, however, Isaac, a former firefighter, gathered a volunteer crew and has started cutting firebreaks around half a dozen cabins along the Tanana River. It's risky, he acknowledged. Few of the 13 crew members have firefighting experience. They range in age from 14 to nearly 70.

"We see it as taking decisive action as concerned citizens," Isaac said. "If nothing is done by those whose duty is to protect this land, we will protect it."

Brian Miller, the incident commander of the Taylor complex, which includes the Porcupine fire, said he's eager for additional firefighting crews.

"Yesterday we had 150 people on 700,000 acres of fire," he said dryly. "We're the No. 1 priority for resources. Whenever they're released (from other fires), we'll try to grab them."

The Porcupine fire has jumped the Taylor Highway and burned within five miles of the Alaska Highway, reducing visibility to a few hundred yards at times for motorists driving through Tok, Miller said.

At the far end of the 160-mile Taylor Highway, the Yukon River village of Eagle was still under siege by 14 fires known as the Eagle complex. Fire managers on Monday warned residents to be ready to evacuate after the fire surged to within two miles of town. A Red Cross facility was set up in Tok.

But a change in the weather kept the fires at bay Tuesday and Wednesday, fire spokesman Bert Plante said. An inversion formed, which is something like shutting the damper on a wood stove, he said. Bringing lower temperatures and higher humidity, it's good for firefighters but bad for residents who have to endure the additional smoke.

It's also hard on Yukon River boaters. The National Park Service issued a warning to canoers, kayakers and motorboaters to stay off the Yukon between Eagle and Circle until the air clears.

The inversion is expected to last at least a day or two longer, Plante said, which should help firefighters strengthen Eagle's defenses.

Down the river in Circle and neighboring Circle Hot Springs and Central, the smoke is making residents edgy, Julie Cooper said.

"It's eerie because you can't see where (the fire) is," she said.

A friend of hers who flew over the fire Tuesday came back reporting it was less than a mile from some cabins.

"He said it made him nervous, and he doesn't get nervous," Cooper said. That got everyone else nervous, she added.

Area residents relieved some of their tensions by using their own bulldozers and other heavy equipment outside of Circle to cut firebreaks, she said.

As numerous and active as the fires are on the Steese and Taylor highways, the state's top big-fire priority remained the Evansville blaze, which doubled in size from Monday to Wednesday, to about 36,000 acres. It continues to burn away from Bettles, but a wind shift could turn it around, fire spokesman Mike Butteri said.

"We're basically trying to hold what we have and hoping the weather cooperates," he said.

The short-term forecast for Interior Alaska doesn't look particularly good or bad, information officer Buist said. Cooler temperatures and scattered showers will help, but thunderstorms could come along for the ride. Not only could lightning spark more fires, but the storms can bring erratic winds that cause problems along the fire line, he said.

Daily News reporter Joel Gay can be reached at jgay@adn.com or at 257-4310.