Alaska wildfire season, marked by significant smoke events, closes with below-average totals

Alaska closed its summer with a wildfire season that was almost exactly normal.

In all, 375 fires burned a little over 667,000 acres in Alaska, according to preliminary numbers, according to federal and state wildfire managers. That number is around the median, with roughly equal numbers of seasons above or below it. However, it is below the current average of about 1 million acres — an average that has been pushed well above the median by several severe seasons as the climate warms.

The compressed timing of the Alaska fires proved serendipitous.

After peaking in early summer, the fire season quieted when consistent rains arrived in July. That timing allowed Alaska to get firefighting help from other states when it was needed, and it in turn allowed Alaska to send firefighters and equipment south when they were needed there, officials said.

“We were able to send the majority of our firefighters and our equipment down to the Lower 48 states like Oregon and Idaho and California and others that had significant wildfire seasons,” said John Boyle, commissioner of the Department of Natural Resources. “Not only were we able to help those other states, but that will likely translate into some significant cost savings for us,” because Alaska is reimbursed for costs of busing aircraft and equipment elsewhere, he said.

This year’s fire season followed a low season in 2023 that also spared the state some costs and trouble.

“We’ve been really lucky in the last couple of seasons,” said Norm McDonald, chief of fire and aviation for DNR’s Division of Forestry.

Even in a lucky season, however, there were challenges and some serious local impacts from individual fires.

One was the 436-acre Riley Fire, which broke out in the middle of summer near the entrance of Denali National Park and disrupted tourism at one of the state’s top visitor destinations. It forced some temporary park closures and caused power outages in the area, and occurred at the peak of the tourism season there.

The fire was on the small side by Alaska standards, “but it had a big impact,” said Beth Ipsen, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska Fire Service.

“It just proves that while we don’t need to have a big fire year in terms of numbers of acres burned, for it to have a significant impact in at least one community,” she said.

Other Interior fires poured so much smoke into Fairbanks that visibility at the international airport there was severely compromised, and numerous air-quality alerts were issued.

For the third year in a row, the airport recorded more than 100 hours of smoke that reduced visibility to 6 miles or less, said Rick Thoman, a scientist with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“That is the first time since Fairbanks International Airport has been in operation — since 1952 — that there’s been three consecutive summers with that level of smoke,” Thoman said during a Sept. 24 webinar hosted by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium’s Local Environmental Observer Network.

In late June, he added, there were a few hours when visibility at the airport was reduced to a quarter of a mile, he said — the first time that smoke has made visibility so low there since 2005, a near-record year for Alaska wildfires.

Of particular significance to the state’s second-largest city was the McDonald Fire, which eventually grew to over 176,000 acres after merging with another fire. It was the largest in the Fairbanks North Star Borough since the record Alaska fire season of 2004, Thoman said.

Also affecting Fairbanks was the Grapefruit Complex, adjacent fires that combined to burn about 90,000 acres. The complex got its name from a rock formation in the White Mountains that is a popular climbing and hiking destination.

While this year’s fire season was mild, there are long-term challenges facing managers,

One is the trend caused by climate change of more fires and more severe burns, a pattern evident in the shortened intervals between big Alaska fire seasons.

McDonald, who has been in the wildland firefighting profession since 1989, said he has noticed the changes. A prime example came in the drought year of 2019, when fires burned as deep as four feet into the ground.

“If it wasn’t rock, it was burned,” he said. “That was something we’d never seen before.”

Additionally, areas that previously were not prone to big wildfires have begun to burn more, such as the tundra-dominant Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Western Alaska. There were record-breaking fires in that region in 2022.

“We are living in a time when fire seasons are increasing challenge and complexity,” McDonald said. “We don’t let our guard down. We have to be ready for a big season.”

Another challenge is maintaining an adequate firefighting workforce.

While wildland fire management is a combined federal-state effort, the federally employed firefighters employed at the BLM-managed Alaska Fire Service have enjoyed better pay and benefits than state-employed wildland firefighters.

Boyle said the pay gap hit 47% when he started as commissioner. “We lost entire hotshot crews at points that just left state service to go work for Alaska Fire Service because, again, they more or less just had to walk across the street to get a 47% pay increase,” he said.

In the past few years, Alaska officials have worked to narrow the gap.

The state budget passed this year includes a 30% pay increase for wildland firefighters, plus the opportunity for a 25% hazard pay premium, Boyle said. That and other efforts have been productive, helping to bring what was a 30% vacancy rate in the forestry division last year to about 19% this year, he said.

Efforts continue to attract more firefighters, and there will likely be another pay increase this year, he said.

The wildlife firefighters deserve such a pay increase, said Boyle, who drew from his experience accompanying a crew on the Pogo Mine Road fire last year.

“You’re out in the wilderness and you’re dealing with dust and bugs and smoke and dirt and grime, and you’re working very hard,” he said.

McDonald, too, said it can be hard to attract or keep wildland firefighters.

“It’s very hard work. It’s arduous. It’s dangerous. You’re away from home a lot. And it’s not for everybody,” he said.

But it is a good fit for some people who embrace wildland firefighting for its adventure, camaraderie and opportunity to work outdoors.

The state-federal pay differential notwithstanding, the federal government also faces workforce challenges in its wildland firefighting programs.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 pumped more funding into wildland fire programs, with initiatives that included a boost in pay. The increase, set at either $20,000 a year or 50% of base pay levels, is set to expire next year. Appropriations bills crafted by committees in both the U.S. Senate and House would extend those pay increases.

Originally published by the Alaska Beacon, an independent, nonpartisan news organization that covers Alaska state government.