Copyright 2006 Anchorage Daily News
All Rights Reserved
By ALEX deMARBAN
Anchorage Daily News (Alaska)
Swaths of beetle-killed trees and forecasts for a hot summer have forest officials predicting another volatile fire season, one that threatens homes on the foothills around Anchorage and portions of the Kenai Peninsula.
Southwest Alaska could also face a worse-than-normal fire season if temperatures broil there as predicted, according to a recent report issued by the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center at Fort Wainwright. The agency coordinates state and federal resources for wildland fire responses.
Wildfire forecasters, caught off guard by widespread burns the last two years, are taking a more cautious approach this year, said report co-author and meteorologist Sharon Alden in Fairbanks.
A record 6.4 million acres burned across the state in 2004, followed by 4.6 million acres last year, the third worst season on record. This happened after forecasters predicted mostly average seasons likely to involve less than 2 million acres, Alden said.
Wildfire prediction in Alaska is a young science, complicated by factors such as warming summers, rare lightning strikes, global weather patterns and campfires, she said.
Anything can happen.
Especially worrisome this year, for threats to life and property, is the Kenai Peninsula, with its popular fishing streams, forest-edge neighborhoods and more than 1 million acres of dead spruce.
Two huge forest fires crackled to life there thanks to late-season lightning storms last year. The Fox Creek fire and the King County Creek fire scorched about 40,000 remote acres on the Peninsula’s western side and filled skies with smoke all the way to Anchorage.
But the greatest risk to life and property, local firefighters say, are springtime wildland blazes fueled by windy days and blue joint reed grass.
The prevalent chest-high grass invades areas with dead or cleared spruce and is a growing fire danger in Southcentral Alaska, said John See, regional fire manager for the state Division of Forestry.
The grass has increased by more than 50 percent in some areas, he said. Highly flammable when dry, it helped spread last April’s Tracy Avenue Fire near Homer that charred 5,000 acres and menaced homes.
Airlifted-in firefighters drenched yards to keep the blaze off dwellings near Homer, and residents in nearby Anchor Point panicked, afraid the flames would jump the Anchor River, assistant fire chief Bob Craig said.
It would have spread quickly, he said. Large tracts of beetle-killed spruce and new expanses of reed grass surround dwellings in Anchor Point. Fire crews and expensive equipment, such as air tankers to drop retardant, weren’t available yet for the early-season flare-up.
“I’m not sure we could have gotten people out,” Craig said.
The state’s official fire season runs from May 1 to Sept. 30, but fire experts hope to move opening day to April 1 in a bill before the Legislature, See said.
Doing so would allow fire officials to restrict burn permits beginning in April and justifies earlier training and preparation for crews and equipment, See said. In the past three years, warming weather has led to multiple fires statewide as early as March, he said.
The outlook on the Peninsula this spring is more encouraging, thanks to a lingering winter that has brought April snow showers, said Mike Chihuly, chief of Ninilchik Emergency Services.
Still, firefighters won’t breathe easy until early June when the grass greens and becomes less flammable. The big concern now is abandoned brush and campfires, he said, especially when Memorial Day revelers flock to the Peninsula to chase clams or king salmon.
In the Anchorage area, firefighters will watch residential areas on hillsides from Eagle River to Girdwood, said Tom Kempton, deputy chief for the Anchorage Fire Department.
Several areas filled with dead spruce and highly flammable black spruce could burn easily if the weather is hot, he said. No one wants a repeat of the Big Lake fire 10 years ago in June that burned more than 400 structures across 37,000 acres.
That blaze opened the door for a new stream of federal dollars -- more than $13 million alone since 2001 -- for fire education and removing beetle-chewed spruce trees from urban areas near forests, he said.
Those efforts and others will continue this year in areas of Anchorage such as along Goldenview and Prospect drives and Eagle River Valley and Bear Valley, he said.
Homeowners in those areas can also use a grant-based program that reimburses them 70 percent for hiring contractors to clear property of dead brush and trees, Kempton said.
In the rest of the state a late-summer drought, combined with storms that conjure up lightning, could keep firefighters very busy, Alden said. Last year, more than 3 million acres burned in August alone.
Southwest Alaska from Dillingham to the Seward Peninsula is at risk of becoming a tinderbox because of low winter snowfall and predictions for a hot summer, she said.
Based on trends of the past 10 to 15 years, that part of the state will likely have higher than normal temperatures, according to officials at the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center in Washington, D.C.
The Interior, site of the state’s biggest fires in the last two years, is expecting average temperatures, Alden said, so forecasters are calling for an average fire season there.
A promising sign that could temper the fire danger in Alaska this summer, she said, are cool, equatorial waters in the Pacific Ocean. La Nina, as the phenomenon is called, influences global weather patterns and historically brings July and August rainstorms to Alaska.
But Alden isn’t placing any bets.
“We don’t have the skill to accurately forecast what the fire season is going to be like,” she said. “We can only say what’s the most likely thing to happen.”
Daily News reporter Alex deMarban can be reached at ademarban@adn.com or 257-4310.
WARNINGS AND FORECASTS: For current local fire warnings, visit firewx.arh.noaa.gov. For long-term regional weather forecasts, visit www.cpc.noaa.gov.