Firefighting agencies have seen a huge amount of public interest as Alaska broke its previous June wildfire record this year.
In Alaska’s 391 fires this month, 1,181,061 acres have burned, more than in June of 2004 which saw 1,153,258 acres burnt.The Alaska Division of Forestry deemed 2004 the worst fire season on record with a total of 6.59 million acres burnt.
Division of Forestry’s Tim Mowry said increased public interest in firefighting comes with the increased fire activity but hiring for this fire season is over.
Mowry: “How it works for both the Division of Forestry and the Alaska Fire Service is in the spring we open up an application period usually in the month of April for all sorts of firefighting positions: admin, drivers, ground support, warehouse workers, and that’s also when we put on our training classes for firefighters. Somebody can’t just walk in the door and even if they’re physically fit and a hard worker and all that, they can’t just walk in the door and be a firefighter.”
235 people completed the 4-hour Red Card refresher classes during Kenai’s training courses and 12 completed the 32-hour Red Card class earlier this year.
Mowry said the public can assist by offering their equipment like boats, bulldozers, buses and water trucks for the division to rent.
Mowry: “And how we go about that is people can go online to the Division of Forestry, the wildland fire and aviation program webpage and they can actually enter their equipment onto our online application system and once their equipment and contact information is in there we use that list as a way to reach out to people when we need to rent equipment.”
Equipment can be offered to the Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska Fire Service by calling Terry Rush at 907-356-5770.
Any equipment offered must be inspected before it’s used by firefighting agencies.