The Soldotna Chamber of Commerce deemed Scott Walden as their Person of the Year.
Scott Walden is widely known as the Office of Emergency Management Director in charge during the Funny River Fire and he spoke with us about the time leading up to that event.
Walden: “I think that the work that was done over the past decade in that area of Funny River Road really made a difference in the end for getting that fire under control and putting it out. We had an excellent group of people from State Forestry out there running the show and I think that we can attribute the fact that we didn’t really lose any residential structures or have any serious injuries and as large as this fire was, it was pretty well contained to wilderness areas and the local area was pretty well spared from problems because of the skill of those firefighters out there.”
He also spoke with us about his time in Alaska before the fire.
Walden: “When I first arrived here I actually worked in some construction for a while, I came from a background of the fire service and emergency medical service in the lower 48, in 1975 I started. Within a couple of years I was able to go to work for the Kenai Police Department at their jail for a while, did some summer time patrol for them. Worked in Seward at the police department for a little bit and then came back to Kenai and got involved in their fire department and stayed there till 2005 when I retired from the city of Kenai. Late 2005 I was asked to come help over at the borough with emergency management and I’ve been there off and on ever since.”
Walden was chosen as the Commerce’s Person of the Year at Tuesday’s 56th Annual Soldotna Chamber Awards Celebrations.