The first holdover fire from the 2019 Swan Lake Fire was reported on Tuesday along the Sterling Highway east of Soldotna.
Firefighters from the Alaska Division of Forestry’s Kenai/Kodiak station responded and hiked into the area to find what they described as “a little smoker” in the Swan Lake Fire scar. The area of smoke was surrounded by downed, burned trees. It took firefighters only about 10 minutes to extinguish and mop up the hot spot.
Howie Kent of the Division of Forestry offered details: “It was just a small ten-by-ten foot area burning on the north side of the highway near mile 66.5 on the Sterling. A couple of passersby called in, they saw smoke so we went and investigated. We confirmed the holdover from last year’s Swan Lake fire.”
The fire was named Swan Lake Overwinter #1. It was the first holdover fire from last summer’s 167,164-acre Swan Lake Fire, which burned for nearly five months and required the attention of thousands of firefighters over the course of the summer.
Kent says that the Division of Forestry expects more holdovers: “We kind of anticipated more holdover fires earlier, but because we’ve been so cool this year as far as temperatures, I think it just took a while for the first one to really manifest itself. We actually got calls all the way up until early January from people that were out recreating in that area that had seen a lot of smoke and a lot of fires out there. I’m sure we’ll see more.”
The Swan Lake fire, which was started by lightning on June 5, 2019 in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, shut down the Sterling Highway on multiple occasions and kept the Kenai Peninsula shrouded in smoke much of the summer. It cost nearly $50 million in suppression costs, however, no homes were burned and there were no serious injuries as a result of the fire.
Due to the size and duration of the fire, as well as the extreme depth that it burned, fire managers will continue monitoring the burned area.