‘This is a 100% suppression fire’: Forestry Division mobilizes assets for early season high-priority fire
Firefighters have cut a line around a 15-acre wildfire south of Delta Junction to keep it from spreading. But it took a couple of days for eight smokejumpers, two fire crews and local volunteer firefighters to prevent the Sawmill Creek Fire from spreading.
State Forestry and Fire Protection Division spokesperson Sam Harrell said the fire started Monday when high winds kicked up embers from an old burn near the northern portion of the Delta Agricultural Project, about 25 miles southeast of town.
“ Winds did carry that fire into the forested state land at the north end of the agriculture project there,” he said. “That same evening, there were passing storm cells, and that really helped to scatter embers from the fire, also.”
On Tuesday, high winds again kicked up embers on the eastern edge of the fire, but the crews from White Mountain and the Tanana Chiefs region knocked it down. A Forestry Division news release they continued working Wednesday on widening the saw line and laying down more hose. Harrell said they had to move carefully through the area to avoid injury from falling trees.
“ The real concern is the fire-weakened trees and the winds bringing those trees down on firefighters working in the area,” he said. “They really need to be cautious about that.”
He said the smokejumpers were sent back to their base on Fort Wainwright on Tuesday, after they and the two crews completed cutting a line around the fire and putting out hotspots across the Gerstle River ignited by embers from the main fire.
“ We always wanna free up the smoke jumpers because they're a very valuable asset, and we always want to have them ready to go to the next emerging fire.”
Harrell said the firefighters will continue extinguishing hotspots within the perimeter. He said Forestry’s drone aircraft equipped with heat sensors are helping crews find those smoldering spots. And they’ll also monitor burned areas across the Gerstle River.
The two crews will continue putting out hotspots while monitoring the area around the fire, because it’s burning in a high-priority area with dozens of homes, farms and livestock herds.
“ It's gonna take a while, because this is a hundred-percent suppression fire,” Harrell said. “They're gonna make sure that there's no heat, no smoke, no nothing left on this fire.”
He said they’ll be watching closely for any other hotspots that may be kicked up by winds forecast for today and Friday.
The Forestry Division has suspended burn permits in the Delta area and in three areas around Fairbanks.
The wildfires in the Delta Ag Project and in two military training areas near Fort Greely and Eielson Air Force Base were the first that state and federal firefighting agencies have responded to so far in the 2026 fire season.
