The Alaska Division of Forestry reports that crews are tackling a small, remote, lightning-caused wildfire in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge near the same area the Swan Lake Fire started two years ago.
(Image courtesy of private citizen pilot report posted on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Facebook page).
Howie Kent, Kenai/Kodiak Area Fire Management Officer for the Alaska Division of Forestry:
“The fire is approximately 6 acres. It’s burning in between two lakes, Swan Lake and Loon Lake. It’s burning in black spruce. There’s pretty heavy downfall and, of course, really thick black spruce so we’re working to get a type 2 incident in place to help assist with the ground efforts there and those folks will come with saws and things necessary to help put some line in, some saw line around that fire and then we’ll plum in some hose, of course tap into some water sources there with some pumps, use our aircrafts that we have available to us to help keep that fire in check until we get those firefighters in place.”
Kent says that the fire was reported to be creeping and smoldering in spruce regrowth:
“The fire was approximately 100 yards wide by about 400 yards long. It looked like the wind had pushed it kind of from west to east and right towards Swan Lake proper there at the lake, but when our resources got on scene last evening, the fire was at rank two with isolated torching. There was areas along the fire perimeter that were torching trees off and on.”
Kent says crews are taking suppression action:
“It is in a limited area, which, generally, we look at those and determine if, given the time of year and our weather factors and available resources statewide, if it would be allowed to do its thing in the natural environment there being a natural caused lightning fire. Generally, we look at that with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service being the landowner. We’ve had those discussions with those folks and we’ve determined that, just given the time of the year and our forecasted weather and kind of where we are at that we are going to take suppression action on this fire.”
Kent estimates that the fire could be put out in about three days:
“It’ll be probably three shifts or maybe a little bit longer than that before we’ll reach our goal of containment and having the fire suppressed. There’s going to be some heavy mop up involved just because of the nature of the fuels that are out there, heavy black spruce and some dead and down that’ll take a little bit of time to mop up. As we get later in the season like we are now, starting to get into the latter part of summer, here, we’re going to start seeing those duff layers hold fire longer. Mopping up the fire will take a little bit longer than what we typically see in the spring season where we just have a surface fire.”
The Loon Lake Fire was reported at 8:11 p.m. Saturday. The fire is one mile from the spot lightning ignited the Swan Lake Fire in 2019, which burned nearly 170,000 acres.
Fifteen members of the Gannett Glacier Type 2 Initial Attack Crew will be added to the suppression lineup today.
