10pm Update
Funny River Fire was listed at 63,000 acres on this evening’s map at the community meetings in Kasilof and Funny River. The fire is now a little more than 5% contained.
Tyonek fire has grown to 1,820 acres. Crews there are focussed on protecting the Beluga Power Plant.
Brad Nelson with CES said fire fighting crews will reconvene tomorrow morning with further details. The evening crew has taken over and will continue to work on pushing the fire away from residential areas.
The tone at the Funny River Community Center meeting was notably lighter than the meeting in Kasilof.
7
The Tustumena Elementary School Funny River fire community meeting heard many questions and saw information officers from the Borough, Forestry, CES, and the Alaska Interagency Incident Management Team to answer them.
Rob Allen said this about tomorrow’s focus.
Allen: “What I’m lookin at right now, the two places we’re focused on the most is where there is the most black spruce and white spruce mixed that could carry the fire that could take it to the closest community. And the first one that was the closest to the northern end coming around that corner on the west theres a lot of spruce that goes straight into soldotna. The next place we’re looking at is on this upper corner which still has a lot of breaks which is the one right up from us here but doesn’t have as much fuel going to the road.”
Many people also asked that a complete burn ban be instituted over Memorial Day weekend, including campfires. As of now a burn suspension is in place however campfires in a structured ring are permitted.
6:45pm Update
A repeated theme of the 6pm Funny River fire community meeting is due to fire fighting resources being spread across the state it has taken a little time to get the proper resources here to safely fight the fire but now that air resources have arrived they expect to make significant progress on it tomorrow
Authorities have said that at no point did they just monitor the fire, they immediately attacked it however, low humidity, high wind speeds, and dry conditions progressed it quickly.
6pm Update
The Funny River fire Community meeting happening now at Tustamena Elementary School.
5pm Update
An update is expected from on the Funny River fire soon according to Borough Emergency Management Services Brad Nelson.
Nelson said aerial crews just got down on the ground and will brief crews so there is new information before the public meeting at Tustamena School at 6 pm.
The last update at around noon indicated the fire was at about a 5% containment.
Joe Dilley with the Soldotna Equestrian Association opened up the Soldotna Rodeo Grounds earlier this week to individuals who were worried about livestock well being in Kasilof.
Dilley gave us an update as to the amount of animals he has there.
Dilley: “Right now we’ve got our horse trailer full of rabbits and cats, we’ve got four alpacas, quite a few goats, I dunno about ten horses and our own cows of course.”
He said that they have their annual rodeo this Saturday and Sunday and despite their current guests are continuing to plan on having the rodeo.
Dilley: “It’s going to be Saturday and Sunday, we are going ahead with the rodeo as far as I know, I know we are having a board meeting Friday at noon or thereabouts to make sure that the air quality and such are up to snuff because the last thing we want to do is hurt any animals.
He said that he doesn’t expect to have to cancel.
Dilley: “Yeah we got the rodeo started a little bit early.”