With the coronavirus pandemic creating difficulty in getting wildland firefighting personnel and equipment to the state this year, not to mention challenges in training and housing crews with social distancing requirements, the Alaska Division of Forestry wants to prevent human-caused fires as much as possible.
Couple that with the fact that spring conditions in between snowmelt and green-up create high fire danger, Forestry issued a statewide burn ban that went into effect Friday.
Apparently, that message was not very well received, as Forestry responded to 14 wildfires around the state over the weekend. Most were the result of burning activities that are now banned, including burn barrels and debris piles.
Forestry says that almost all the fires started in populated areas with residences nearby. All but one was put out before causing much damage. On Friday night, a generator caught a shed on fire, which spread to a residence nearby. The residence was destroyed. That was in the Point MacKenzie area of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley.
At least three fires started from burn barrels that got out of control. A couple more from escaped debris pile fires. One of those reignited from a burn four days prior that hadn’t been properly extinguished.
Embers from a gas tank flare caused a small blaze. A gas can placed near a barbecue grill exploded and spread to surrounding dry grass on Sunday. A hot chainsaw set in dry grass caused another fire.
Most of the weekend fires were in the Mat-Su Valley but the Kenai Peninsula was not blameless. There was a fire in the Miller Loop area of Nikiski on Sunday night caused by an escaped debris burn. Another peninsula fire on Saturday started as a campfire that got out of control.
The burn ban is in effect from Cordova north. The ban does allow 3-foot-or-less campfires, cooking fires and signal fires and use of commercially made barbecues, but Forestry warns that extreme caution needs to be taken right now, even with permitted burning activities, until fire conditions improve.
