State and federal firefighting agencies scrambled over the weekend to respond to numerous fires that were ignited by three days of lightning all around the Interior.
“ Friday, the lightning and thunderstorms were slowly moving more to the south-central portion of the state, and there were 4,000-plus strikes on that day, said Sam Harrell, a state Forestry and Fire Protection Division spokesperson Sam Harrell.
He said the barrage of lightning strikes continued through the weekend.
“ On Saturday, the storms moved through the interior, and those numbered more than 5,000 strikes through the interior. And we're anticipating lightning to continue on Sunday, and at the time we're talking now, we're at 3,000 lightning strikes here, 3 p.m. Sunday.”
One of the wildfires was sparked in an agricultural area east of Delta Junction.
The Granite Fire had burned about 36 acres as of Sunday evening, since it was reported Saturday morning burning in a forested area near some cleared fields about 17 miles east of Delta, near Clearwater Creek.
Sam Harrell said agency officials called in a retardant tanker, four water-scooping aircraft and firefighting crews from White Mountain and a Tanana Chiefs Conference crew from Fairbanks to fight the blaze.
“They did a really good job getting around that fire Saturday evening with a lot of water-scooping aircraft and the retardant tankers,” he said.
Harell said bulldozers quickly cut a line around the fire. And crews had used that dozerline and some swampy areas to encircle about 80 percent of the fire by Saturday evening.
The tanker made several runs dropping loads of fire retardant before the aircraft was sent back to its base in Fairbanks, he said.
“We had so many new fires in the Interior on Saturday afternoon and evening that we really needed to move those aerial assets around to where they were needed. We were able to get a lot of them to Delta Junction when we needed them, but we needed to reassign a lot of them to Anderson a few hours later when that fire took off.”
Forestry also got help from local firefighters and equipment from Deltana Volunteer Fire Department and City of Delta Fire Department. Harrell said the agency also contracted some area farmers, who brought their tractors and farm implements to work over the land in some areas to slow the fire from spreading.
“They also have tractors with disks that they can pull through and turn the ground over to remove those flashy, fine fuels on the ground to really slow the fire spread.”
Rainfall Sunday afternoon helped slow the growth of the fire. The National Weather Service forecasts more rain in the area Monday and Tuesday nights.
