Agressive response halts South Peninsula fires after fast starts

The two Lower Kenai Peninsula wildfires the ignited in recent days did not see any growth Monday night. The 59-acre North Fork Fire near Diamond Ridge between Anchor Point and Homer has been surrounded, according to Howie Kent, with the Incident Command in Soldotna.
 “We've got dozer line around 100 percent of that fire, but we're not calling it contained just yet because there's still some active fire within the perimeter there. It's currently a 59 acres and we're not expecting that fire to move anymore,” Kent said.
    Meanwhile, the 100-plus-acre Caribou Lake Fire was threatening about 30 cabins in the Caribou Hills north of Homer, and it received a swift and aggressive response, said Andy Alexandreau, of the Division of Forestry in Soldotna.
 “Fire Boss aircraft delivered water and retardants at the perimeter of that fire along with eight smoke jumpers are on that fire. It was 100% active yesterday. Today we have the Redding Hot Shot Crew, they’re a Type 1 Hot Shot Crew, that just got into the state and they're en route."
    With the resurgence of the Swan Lake Fire, firefighting assets are at a premium, but, according to Kent, it’s not so tight that there can’t be some sharing.
 “At the same time we're trying to get additional crews in the fire. Of course we have the Swan Lake Fire going on as well here. It's got a lot of a lot of different moving parts and a lot of people are coming into this with that effort,” he said. “So we're trying to utilize crews and aircraft that assigned to that fire to assist with this fire down at Caribou Lake.”
    Fire-fighting weather looks favorable for the next week, with fair skies, but little if any wind. There is a slight chance of isolated showers on Saturday.