Wind gusts extinguish Alaska firefighters' plans to practice their craft

BUTTE, Alaska — Winds brought an early halt to a live firefighting exercise set to burn more than 60 acres of dry grass and trees Saturday behind the Plant Materials Center on Bodenburg Loop.

Firefighters from the Alaska Division of Forestry and the Chugiak, Anchorage, Butte, Sutton, Meadow Lakes, Palmer and Central Mat-Su fire departments showed up for the drill, designed to practice interagency wildfire coordination.

There were firetrucks, ATVs and a water-dropping helicopter.

"This is a good way to knock the rust chunks off," Ken Bullman, the Division of Forestry Mat-Su Area forester, said.

The plan was to set fire to the grass in stages. After one practice burn, the next fire would lead into a stand of trees, which would also be burned. Then the teams would move on to various other patches and practice putting out fires and protecting buildings.

Firefighters did a test burn on a one-acre patch, then moved on and started the first exercise.

They used a mixture of gasoline and diesel from a pair of drip torches. Soon the field was ablaze.

All that was visible of firefighters working downwind were yellow, red and white helmets poking through the thick gray smoke. The exercise was under way.

But after about an acre had burned, winds picked up, gusting above the agreed-upon 15 mph safety limit.

Officials on the scene were timing how fast the fire moved, and with the winds pushing from behind, it was progressing at 740 feet per minute, said Glen Holt of the Division of Forestry.

At that speed, "in rough terrain it would be difficult for a firefighter to get out in front of it," Holt said.

Central Mat-Su assistant chief Michael Keenan, an exercise coordinator, was a little disappointed that the exercise had to stop but said it was worth doing and that the exercise went "real well for what we could do."

With so many agencies on hand, they practiced communication. They laid out a hose line several hundred feet long, something they don't often get to do. And six recently certified Central Mat-Su firefighters practiced wildfire techniques.

Rain leading up to the original exercise date of April 29 had delayed it the first time around. Keenan doesn't think they'll try again.

Pretty soon "if it doesn't rain we'll be doing the real thing," he said, adding of his mostly volunteer department, "we can't keep pushing these people back, they all have lives."