Copyright 2006 Anchorage Daily News
All Rights Reserved
By S.J. KOMARNITSKY and ANDREW WELLNER Anchorage Daily News
Anchorage Daily News (Alaska)
WASILLA, Alaska — The night of June 3, 1996, Tonia Julian was just leaving her log home on Stepan Lake to shop for a bike for her 5-year-old grandson. As she and her husband, Jim, stepped outside, she looked up and saw a giant, mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke looming just north of her home.
She knew right away it was a forest fire.
“I said, ‘Oh, my goodness, look at this,’ ” she said.
It was the start of the state’s most destructive wildfire ever.
During the next several days, the blaze raged over 37,000 acres, crisscrossing its way through neighborhoods from the north end of Big Lake to near Point MacKenzie. In all, more than 300 homes, businesses and other structures worth an estimated $15 million were destroyed, and hundreds were left homeless.
Residents remember wondering if the flames would ever stop.
Many spent fretful hours huddled in shelters, repeatedly calling their answering machines, hoping to hear the reassuring beep that would tell them their homes were still standing.
Others ignored roadblocks and evacuation orders to battle the flames with shovels and garden hoses.
Some, like Julian, were lucky. She returned to find her yard, including a greenhouse, truck, tractor, boat and snowmachine, torched. But her home was still standing.
Phil Hill, a retired Anchorage firefighter, found the 2,000-square-foot log home his family had owned for more than 20 years reduced to a pile of ash. The only items left unscathed, he said, were a hoe, a backyard fence and amazingly, next to the fence, a cluster of sweet peas, still blooming.
Firefighters fought a pitched but chaotic battle against the fire. They tried frantically to hold a line while the blaze ripped across thousands of acres in a few hours and grew so large it created its own winds.
A few survived close calls, including a Big Lake fire crew that deployed their last-ditch emergency shelters when a wall of flame suddenly shifted their way near Miller’s Reach Road. Another shift in the winds kept the flames from passing over them.
Some firefighters lost their own homes, then faced criticism from other homeowners who claimed they didn’t do enough to fight the blaze.
The fire’s fickle nature, its tendency to switch directions and to hop past some properties but drop burning embers on others — even one on an island — made it difficult for crews to choose where to make their stand.
Since the fire, Big Lake has rebuilt and then some. New homes and businesses have sprung up, and nearly 800 new residents have moved to the area, boosting the population to a bit more than 2,800, according to state Labor Department figures.
Life has come back to the forest as well. Once-blackened areas are now filled with a green understory of birch and alder.
Vivid reminders of the blaze remain. Along Kenlar Road near Houston High School, the fire cremated phone poles. All along the road today, scorched spruce stand like blackened toothpicks.
Just how quickly small fires can rage out of control given the right conditions was made clear at Point MacKenzie this past week when a wildfire, apparently sparked by a power line, ripped though 700 acres, destroyed two homes and sent smoke wafting through Anchorage.
Big Lake is still at risk, fire officials said.
A 19-acre wildfire sprang up May 23 off Knik-Goose Bay Road in black spruce that had burned during the 1996 blaze. The fire burned less intensely than it might have in a patch of unburned spruce, but it could easily have escaped given the right wind conditions, said Central Matanuska-Susitna assistant fire chief Michael Keenan.
“The potential for it to happen is still there,” said Big Lake Fire Chief Bill Gamble.
OUT OF CONTROL
A perfect combination of conditions led to the Big Lake fire, known in firefighting records as the Miller’s Reach Fire No 2.
The forest was ready to burn in a way it hadn’t been in decades.
Less snow than normal had fallen the previous winter, leaving the forest drier than usual, according to a state-commissioned review of the fire. All through April, fire crews stayed busy. Just two weeks before the Big Lake fire, a blaze in Houston had roared out of control and burned three homes.
Crews were on high alert when a wildfire broke out June 2 along Miller’s Reach Road just north of Big Lake. It quickly grew from seven to 60 acres, but fire officials believed they had it contained by the following morning.
About 7 p.m. June 3, as crews mopped up, gusting north winds blew the fire out of control.
Bill Gamble, a few miles away at a school picnic with his daughter, saw the smoke. He took his daughter home, headed to the fire station, grabbed a truck and drove to the end of Beaver Lake Road. From there, he saw what looked like an inferno -- a 200-foot wall of flame cresting like a wave over the treetops.
“I immediately turned to the gentleman that was with us and I said, ‘We’re in a lot of trouble here,’ ” he said.
Over the next six hours, the blaze raced through 10,000 acres, said state forester Glen Holt.
“That blows everything all out of manageability,” he said.
The sheer magnitude of the fire complicated tactical firefighting decisions. Poor communication among fire departments also hampered the crews. Gamble remembers scrambling from house to house, then running as the fire nearly doubled back on itself.
“It was just absolute chaos,” he said.
Many residents decided to stay and fight the fire on their own.
Jim Julian made that choice. He put sprinklers on the roof and wrapped a wet towel around his head to stay cool, his wife, Tonia, said. At one point, he jumped in a canoe and paddled into the lake to escape the flames, she said.
Tonia, meanwhile, packed her car with a collection of Alaska masks and carved ivory and took one last picture before heading down the driveway. The shot frames her husband hosing down the roof. Behind him rises a wall of orange smoke and flame.
“I hope I see it again,” she remembered thinking of her home.
The fire in some places crept low through dry brush and grass. In other places, it leaped up the tinder-dry branches of spruce trees, sending burning needles flying and superheating the resin inside until the trees burst.
Jody Simpson of Big Lake remembers the trees popping and propane tanks exploding as the fire moved toward her home on Rocky Lake.
Ferocious winds, meanwhile, snatched embers and carried them as far as a quarter of a mile, where they started new fires.
Finally, four days after the fire blew up, crews aided by cooler, wetter weather began to make headway against the blaze. Another week would pass before they had the fire officially under control.
LESSONS LEARNED
Another big wildfire, like an earthquake or hurricane, is inevitable. But state and Valley firefighters say they are more prepared to fight such a fire than they were 10 years ago.
State forestry officials have more employees and equipment stationed in nearby Palmer; they train more often with local fire departments, including an annual wildfire drill; and they say they know one another’s designated radio frequencies.
“We work as a team now, and it wasn’t like that in 1996,” said Gamble.
State and borough fire departments are more familiar with one another’s equipment and capabilities, which makes for a quicker, more effective response, Keenan agreed.
He cited as an example the fire off Knik-Goose Bay Road. Keenan called for a state Forestry Division helicopter as soon as he saw the column of smoke. Ten years ago, he might have hesitated, he said.
Matanuska-Susitna Borough and firefighting officials also do more to teach fire prevention, using federal grants to show residents how to clear around their homes. They have also spent tens of thousands of dollars to clear swaths of trees around schools and other key public properties in Big Lake, Willow, Butte and Meadow Lakes.
Drawing firm conclusions about how the fire changed Big Lake is difficult.
Jody Simpson, a former member of the Mat-Su Borough Assembly, said the blaze stalled economic growth in the area. Several businesses, including the landmark Klondike Inn, burned, and several properties lost their curb appeal.
In many places, the fire left just blackened stumps, Simpson said.
“Not to be melodramatic, but they were kind of like gravestones,” she said.
Now, however, it’s easy to find homes for sale in the area with asking prices upward of $400,000. Many of those who rebuilt upgraded, Simpson said, putting in year-round homes in place of recreational cabins.
In many ways, the fire brought the community together, said Lynndeen Knapp, who 10 years ago had just become principal at Big Lake Elementary School. Residents pitched in to help children left homeless and without clothes by the fire, she said.
The fire also left bitter feelings.
Some Big Lake residents filed a class-action suit against the state alleging negligence in the initial firefighting efforts. But a jury ruled the state not at fault after a six-week trial. Many, however, still feel the state didn’t do enough to stop the blaze at its start.
Others still struggle to recover financially. Hill, like many, is now making payments on a $110,000 federal loan he got to rebuild his house. His previous home had been paid off, he said.
Simpson said people may not talk about the fire much, but they remember it. Even today, she said, she keeps all her pictures in one place, just in case.
A community potluck and commemoration of the 1996 Big Lake fire is scheduled for 5-8 p.m. June 15 at the Big Lake Library, South Big Lake Road.
The commemoration is being held in conjunction with the kickoff of the library’s summer reading program. It will include a tree planting ceremony and booths with information on how to protect homes during forest fires, as well as live music and a community barbecue.
For more information, call the Big Lake Chamber of Commerce at 892-6109 or the library at 892-6475.