As of Tuesday, forestry officials reported 56 active fires in Southwest Alaska.
UPDATE Tuesday 6:00 p.m.: The Alaska Interagency Coordination Center report listed 61 new fires Tuesday morning, with 243 active fires state-wide, a number officials expected to continue to grow. According to the Togiak refuge manager, the fire upriver from Togiak had grown to 250 acres and reached the banks of the Togiak River.
KDLG: As of Tuesday, there were 56 active fires in Southwest Alaska.
Fires near Lower Kalskag, Lime Village, Crooked Creek, and McGrath are being staffed.
Forestry spokesperson Francis Mitchell says moving crews off the Whitefish Lake fire to Lower Kalskag as a staging area for protecting homes and other communities threatened by fires.
“They’re available for quick response at lower/upper Kalskag, Aniak," he said, "because there are fires near those communities.”
Mitchell says the Kalskag crew is stationed at the runway, ready to deploy as needed:
“…ever-changing and fluid, that’s kinda the way operations are," explained Mitchell. "But the focus is on getting the few crews that are in the southwest area at staging points where they can be quickly deployed to new fires that threaten life.”
An unstaffed fire at Why Lake between Lime Village and Stony River has grown to 10,000 acres.
Fires near the Kokwok River, and the Chichitnok and King Salmon Rivers continue to burn on the West Side of the Bristol Bay watershed, and fires Copenhagen, Paul’s, and Coffee Creek on the east side of Bristol Bay.
Naknek resident Mary Swaim says the wind shifted Monday afternoon, bringing smoke from one or more of these fires into town.
"In low-lying areas you can kind of see it looks like a haze," said Swaim. "And then there's the obvious camp-fire like smell everywhere you go. You know, I had to call the clinic – my son has asthma – to get an extra inhaler just in case."
Togiak residents are keeping an eye on a fire burning upriver from the village that appears to have been started by Sunday night’s thunderstorms. Togiak Refuge manager Susanna Henry says biologists flew over the fire around noon today, and reported it has grown significantly since yesterday:
“It’s now up to around 250 acres. It’s an oval about a mile long by a half-mile wide. It’s managed to creep over and is now on the bank of the Togiak River.
At this time Henry says, no structures are threatened. The fire continues to spread over tundra and dry grass.
“It still sounds like the main direction of spread is to the north. But you know, the fact that it made it to the Togiak River, that was more to the south of it. So I think it’s just enlarging in every direction.”
For fires like this one in wilderness areas, Henry says the strategy is to let them burn themselves out.
"That strategy would change," she says, "if they changed direction, if they were coming toward towns or communities or if they were threatening any structures."
Henry says the refuge will continue to monitor the fire north of Togiak in daily flights.
According to state officials, nearly all of those fires were started by lightning strikes. But despite the rain over the weekend, Mitchell says the region is still in critical fire danger.
"But just a bit of rain or a quick heavy rain and then moving on and then the lightening starts and because of the fuels condition it's still very likely to take off," said Mitchell. "And we've been seeing that happen. Wherever there is a lighting strike it seems there is going to be a fire.”
The Division of Forestry has issued a burn ban for Western Alaska that includes all cooking, warming, or any other type of fire on state land until further notice. The state fire marshall has also banned the use and even sale of all fireworks.
With more thunderstorms forecasted for the next two days, Division of Forestry says more wildfires are expected.
