Alaskans menaced by what is now the nation's top wildfire remained cautious Thursday, though the heart of the Card Street blaze had raged miles into the unpopulated Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, driven by winds from the west that quadrupled its size to 12,000 acres in the past day.
By Wednesday night, Tom Deal had moved back into his cabin along Kenai Keys Road near Sterling after the fire forced him to evacuate. But he had a "weird premonition" just before going to bed and jumped on his four-wheeler to find a vantage point from which to assess the fire.
What he saw jarred him.
"It was a totally impressive plume of smoke," and it appeared to be heading back toward Sterling neighborhoods, he said.
"It was like Mount Redoubt or Mount St. Helens going off. I'm guessing the plume was 10,000 feet tall. I got nervous and said, 'Oh boy.' "
He fled the fire again, throwing photos and other important possessions into his car and heading down the Sterling Highway for a closer look. It was there he realized the fire was burning in wilderness and the wind direction would likely keep it that way.
He returned home to sleep and said he would return to work as a builder on Thursday, giving life a sense of normalcy.
Others were also able to breathe a sigh of relief.
Still, the blaze has become the nation's No. 1 fire priority for various reasons, including that Willow's Sockeye Fire is considered static while the Card Street fire has seen "explosive" growth, said Terry Anderson, a public information officer with the state Division of Forestry.
"The fire is growing as we speak," he said Thursday afternoon.
But it was perhaps 5 miles east of homes and pushing deeper into the refuge, Anderson said from the Kenai Keys subdivision, as people were hosing red fire-retardant off homes.
A multi-agency incident-management team from the state of Washington took over management of the Card Street fire Thursday, he said. The fire's national ranking opens up the possibility of new assets, including more firefighters and large Chinook helicopters. Decisions will have to be made on how to protect public assets, such as campgrounds and facilities.
An evacuation order for the southern side of the Kenai River was lifted early Thursday, as well as for some homes across the river, directly north of the Kenai Keys and Feuding Lane intersection.
Still, it remained in effect for the Kenai Keys and Card Road areas on the river's north side, where a few homes were lost and others were narrowly spared after an aggressive effort by firefighters and residents wielding hoses late Tuesday.
Emergency management officials with the Kenai Peninsula Borough have said 11 structures were destroyed, but would not say how many were "primary residences."
Hotshot crews that arrived from the Lower 48 offered some comfort as the ranks of firefighters grew to 256, increasing by almost fivefold the number of responders from two days earlier.
Brenda Ahlberg, with the Kenai Peninsula Borough, said early Thursday afternoon the fire continued to push into the refuge.
Sandy Bailey, one of the "mossbacks" who live year-round in Kenai Keys, a canal-crossed neighborhood of log dwellings and vacation homes, said she felt better knowing fire crews were patrolling the area to put out hot spots. They'd done a controlled burn near her house on Wednesday, removing trees that could provide potential fuel.
"With the firefighters on the ground, we got the first good night of sleep in a while," she said.
Things weren't quite back to normal though. The landline phone and power are still off, and she and others are getting water from a neighbor with a generator-powered pump, she said via a cellphone charged by a generator.
"To get a shower would be wonderful," she said.
The neighborhood has been threatened by fire the last two years and is now bordered by charred forest and the glacial-blue river. Still, some people haven't thinned their foliage, leaving dense, local clutches of trees that could flare in a flash.
"You might let property owners know they need to fire-wise their properties," she said. "Some people are averse to it, but they've got to thin out trees. If embers come in here at all, this whole thing could go up so we're not totally safe."
Still, she and others are feeling more comfortable.
"I think we dodged a major bullet," she said.