Drizzle Slows Pace of Big Su Fire
By Becky Stoppa, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
Jun. 23–DESHKA LANDING — The Big Su fire grew to 9,700 acres Friday, but lower temperatures and drizzling rain helped crews battling it.
“It’s not contained or controlled” but it’s no longer a running, crowning fire, said Tom Dean, the state Department of Natural Resources incident commander.
The rain also helped improve air quality Friday near Willow. Some in the area, though, say smoke blanketed the sky before the rain fell.
The fire surged Thursday toward the south end of Trapper Lake, a roadless area about five miles west of Caswell and the Parks Highway. Approximately 40 cabins surround the lake, Dean said; of those, 25 were threatened.
Alaska state troopers evacuated all but five of those homes. People who stayed have floatplanes and boats, so they can escape if conditions worsen, Dean said.
“We can’t really force people to leave, but they’re safe,” he said.
Crews placed a retardant line in front of the homes on the south end to stop the spreading fire and to secure both the east and west sides of the lake, Dean said. One helicopter then spent all night dropping buckets of water to further protect the homes.
“We had active fire right around the homes. But with the bucket work that was done last night, no homes were lost,” Dean said Friday.
One structure was believed lost south of Trapper Lake during earlier stages of the fire, officials said.
Though the Trapper Lake homes were spared, the fire split at the retardant line and made its way around both the east and the west sides of the lake by Friday morning. At this point, Dean said, the fire is not expected to cross the Susitna River or the Parks Highway.
Despite higher humidity and a little rain, conditions remained very dry and the fire hazard very high, according to forestry spokesman Glen Holt. “Conditions are so dry that fire is carrying across the muskeg,” he said in an afternoon fire update.
Elsewhere in Mat-Su, firefighters continued working on a 60-acre wildfire north of the Yentna River along Lake Creek, according to Holt. Additional supplies and manpower arrived on the scene Friday.
TROUBLESOME CREEK FIRE
The Troublesome Creek Fire off Mile 139 of the Parks Highway has been suppressed and is being monitored, he said.
Reinforcement crews from the Lower 48 and around Alaska were called upon to help with the Big Su fire, Dean said. Firefighters from McGrath and Fort Yukon arrived Thursday night, and crews from the Lower 48 were expected later Friday.
A front moving into the area brought strong winds but also increased the relative humidity and lowered temperatures, from the 80s on Wednesday and Thursday to the mid-50s on Friday.
“Even though we get the wind, the high humidity and the moisture will help significantly,” Dean said.
Changing weather also helped clear the smoky skies at Deshka Landing, the staging area for crews fighting the Big Su Fire.
Larry Benson, an Anchorage man who owns a cabin on Deshka Loop, says he awoke Friday morning to “a total brown-out.”
“It was pretty cool–almost a yellow or orange coloring of the sky,” Benson said.
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