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OPINION: A natural season best viewed from afar

May 30th 3:05 pm | Lew Freedman Print this article   Email this article   Create a Shortlink for this article

Fire. I can hear sirens as I write this and I wonder what's burning. We are all brought up to fear fire, not to play with matches, not to go too close to the stove.

Yet to some degree we are fascinated by fire and that seems truer the larger a conflagration is and the farther away it is from our homes.

Wildfires rivet us and worry us, hypnotize us and confound us. Near the end of May, the first wildfire of the 2011 Alaska summer season was burning near Fairbanks, having consumed more than 700 acres of timber and dry land.

Dry and windy weather compounds the spread of flame and fires untended, unimpeded, and driven by breezy days can leap from one dry patch of land and trees to another very swiftly, growing in size by 10 times in a 24-hour day.

From our earliest age, Smokey the Bear tells us we can prevent forest fires. As youths we may hear about the great, roaring fires of Yellowstone National Park. In Alaska, however, we hear more about wildfires begun by lightning, not carelessly discarded matches or camp fires not 100 percent doused.

In other words, it is not always our fault. The human element is sometimes removed from the start of a wildfire. Those fires are all between Mother Nature and Mother Nature and we are happy to be left out. The lightning strikes and sparks flame in an uninhabited area and no one even notices the fire until a pilot flies over. By then the fire is a couple of hundred acres in size and growing.

In most places in the Lower 48, a fire could not burn in secrecy for long. But in vast Alaska, where 586,000 square miles is not always on the awareness screen at once, a fire in a remote section of the state can pick up power without a human being passing within miles of the point of origin.

Alaskans fear fire just as much as anyone if the blaze is in their home, their yard, or in buildings they frequent. Any place in the state that has a considerable amount of timber, whether it is the Tongass National Forest, Kincaid Park, or the land along the Parks Highway is susceptible to fire.

Unlike other United States, however, part of Alaska is treeless tundra. The North Slope has no connection to trees, except checking them out on television. Put it this way, forest fire is not one of the major concerns of Barrow residents.

Wildfires can be scarier animals than angry grizzly bears. If they burn in the forest and hardly anyone knows it, no one gets upset. If they burn in a forest near a community, natural disaster mobilization gets underway quickly.

The Fairbanks-area fire was named "The Moose Mountain Fire," and it started near the Goldstream area, close to cabins and homes. Although the wind gratefully moved the fire away from the most heavily populated areas, there were 200 firefighters on the job soon after the fire was pinpointed.

Early analysis of this particular fire was that humans, rather than natural causes, might be to blame for starting it, although searching for reasons always takes a back seat to putting the blaze out. Firefighting philosophy is essentially act now, ask questions later.

Just how wild a wildfire is determines public reaction to a major-league blaze. If people are not concerned about losing their homes, they go about their business as normally as possible. There are times when wind direction can involve them in a fire whether they want to pay attention or not. I have been in Fairbanks when the smoke from a nearby fire is thick enough to taste and to burn your eyes.

It is more comforting when lighting starts a wildfire in a remote area and it is merely part of the natural process of ecological evolution. From those charred acres, the land and trees come back rejuvenated and stronger. As long as those fires stay away from town, we don't mind them at all.

Lew Freedman is a former Alaska journalist and the other of numerous books about the state.

 


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