1/28/2024 0 Comments Near reality dice tactics![]() ![]() “Thankfully, they started getting it under control,” he said.įor now, both the city and Schrage’s fire department are focused on keeping things under control - implementing as many preventative measures as possible. He gathered his pets and important papers in his vehicle - his wife was already safe in Anchorage - and drove 5 miles down the only road serving the roughly 600 neighborhood residents to safety. Half of those fire seasons have occurred since 2002, including the worst year on record - 2004 - when more than 10,156 square miles burned.įrom his home high above Anchorage in 2019, Moore saw the black smoke billowing from a fire miles away in a heavily wooded area of the city. Since 1950, there have been 14 years in which more than 4,687 square miles - the equivalent of 3 million acres - have burned during Alaska’s short but intense fire season. More than 4,844 square miles burned statewide last year - an area just under the size of Connecticut. is headed into an El Niño year this season, which traditionally means a bigger fire year and further raises concerns, said Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist with National Weather Service, Alaska Region. The city reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit four years ago, the city’s hottest temperature on record, and it’s had five significant wildfires over the last seven years that were all extinguished before causing much damage. ![]() Such precautions - common in parched and fire-prone states like California and Colorado - are relatively new in Anchorage in the face of increased fire risk fueled by global warming. it’s like rolling the dice on being alive or dead,” said Matt Moore, who fled his home in 2019 lest he be trapped on the wrong side of the flames on the single road. That same small neighborhood with but one road in and out has also discussed installing sirens to warn residents on the city’s wooded fringes of fire danger and hopes to build a database of all residents for emergency communications. In one hilly neighborhood, a community council is researching locations for a makeshift helipad that could be used for air evacuations. This spring, 360 city firefighters are training on wildland firefighting tactics like using water hoses to create a line around the perimeter of a fire and the city is encouraging homeowners to participate in a program to identify hazards like brush and old trees that would feed a fire before it’s too late. “Our strategy is basically to put as many resources as we have on duty on a small fire so that we can keep it contained” while waiting for assistance from the Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection, Schrage said. The city also has limited wildfire equipment, and it’s nearly impossible to get a fire engine up some switchback roads to homes nestled high up mountains. But as Anchorage has grown, the available land is higher up, where wild and urban areas intersect, and those fires are very different from what his firefighters are trained to combat. ![]() Schrage’s city fire department is adept at fighting blazes in buildings.
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