The Swan Lake fire on the Kenai Peninsula continues to delay traffic, with hours-long stops on the Sterling Highway near Cooper Landing. A new management team is set to be in place Wednesday.
A Type III management team had been keeping an eye on the Swan Lake fire for weeks. It started on June 5th, but with the highway corridor largely protected and fire breaks strengthened near Sterling, it was allowed to burn through a portion of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge that hadn’t seen fire since the 40’s. But then two solid days of wind changed everything.
“We haven’t had this kind of weather condition. We’re working outside of any norms," Leah Eskelin, a Ranger at the Refuge. She says the unprecedented weather is forcing fire managers to make new considerations.
“If someone were looking over their shoulder, the typical work that a team does to prepare actions on an incident, they’re moving one (step) out from that because, you know, those crazy winds. It was a real quick move up to that next level of management.”
The Great Basin Type I team of about 100 personnel was expected to take the lead on the fire Wednesday. The rapidly changing and unprecedented conditions, though, can be frustrating for nearby residents, even if they’ve been through this before, like Micheal Agin. He has a home in the Kenai Keys, where the Card Street fire burned through four years ago.
“Sometimes when you’ve been through something, you kind of rest on your laurels; oh I did that it wasn’t that big of a deal. What people don’t realize is that wood that partially burned in ‘14 and ‘15 is now dry and laying on the ground and I’ve been told that if that starts on fire, we’ll have a different beast on our hands.”
No homes are under threat from the fire, which is burning almost exclusively on Refuge land. Agin says he’s anxious for a new team to be on site, with more frequent updates.
“In their defense, they’re under-resourced here, they’ve got some new people coming in and I think it will improve and maybe the map updates will come twice a day instead of every other day.”
The city of Soldotna is providing free camping on city campgrounds if the highway closes and a Red Cross shelter is open in Soldotna as well.
