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Officials Monitoring Fairbanks Fire; Issue Red Flag Warnings

Alaska smokejumpers and a ground crew with the Alaska Division of Forestry responded to a three acre wildfire near a popular liquor store and gas station on the west side of Fairbanks Monday afternoon. It’s unclear if any structures are threatened.  Slater says the Gold Hill Fire will be monitored over the next few hours and likely overnight. 

Thick, brown smoke from a prescribed burn on the Oklahoma Range in the Army’s Donnelly Training Area near Delta Junction has filled the air north of the Alaska Range. The blaze was ignited Saturday.  Mel Slater, a spokesman with the Alaska Fire Service, says it has since grown to 30-thousand acres. “It wasn’t anticipated that it would be that large, but of course we plan for that possibility. So there’s a lot of dried grass out there, so it’s burning pretty good," he said. 

Slater says a team with US Army Alaska is responsible for keeping tabs on that burn. As of Monday afternoon, 88 wildfires had burned roughly 150 acres across the state. Slater says Red Flag warnings have been issued for much of the Central Interior and a large swath of the South Central Region.  

“This is a very critical time for fire starts during red flag warnings and we really need people to be careful with their activities and it’s not people going out and starting a fire on purpose, but any spark from a piece of machinery, an automobile, any of those kinds of things can be a spark that starts a fire," Slater said.