Fairbanks, AK - Richard Hadley is a public information officer with an incident management team from California assigned to the Stuart Creek 2 Fire burning East of Eielson Air Force Base. He says the fire grew to more than 64 thousand acres Sunday, but firefighters have achieved five percent containment. “We have a lot more line that’s been built up the western flank of the fire heading toward the Chena River and we hope to tie that into the river later today," he says. "On the southern edge, the fire is backing down hill slowly towards a road, so once it reaches the road, we’ll be able to achieve some containment in that area as well.”
Nearly 700 personnel are battling the blaze. Hadley says that includes six hotshot crews, 16 hand crews on the ground and help from various agencies. "The Department of Defense has three Chinook helicopters they’ve made available to us and today we expect to have two Blackhawk helicopters from the national guard, so that kind of cooperation is really helping out,” says Hadley.
Authorities reported that 120 adults and 57 children left the Two Rivers and Pleasant Valley communities Sunday following an evacuation notice, which is still in place. Hadley says crews continue to secure more than 600 homes threatened by the blaze. “We’ve had crews in there for days taking measures to reduce fuels around homes. In some locations we installed water tanks, hose line and sprinkler systems.”
On Saturday night, officials held a community meeting to address local concerns regarding the fire. Fort Wainwright Commander Colonel Ron Johnson took the floor. He says despite persistent red flag warnings, the army moved forward with artillery training that ignited the fire earlier this month. The army was able to mitigate the blaze until last week. “So it was monitored, smoked up, they hit it again and then when the fire conditions changed it flared up and we got what we got,” he said before the crowd of area residents.
Some mushers have moved their sled dogs to dog yards across the region. Other residents are taking livestock and other animals to the Tanana Valley State Fairgrounds. The University of Alaska, Fairbanks has opened its doors for evacuees. The Red Cross has set up an evacuation center at Weller Elementary School.