A year later, Willow is still recovering from the Sockeye fire

WILLOW — A year after the Sockeye fire blazed a path of destruction through Willow, some burned-out property owners are still deep in recovery mode.
Scott Smith was a few weeks from getting homeowner's insurance last summer when the fire destroyed his nearly finished house.

Smith's became one of 55 stories of loss in the apocalyptic wake of an inferno started by two Anchorage residents who left smoldering yard debris unattended on a hot, windy day and fled when it spread into nearby spruce.

Life in this eclectic community of 2,000 known as Alaska's mushing capital will never be the same.

Smith and friends got his two-dozen sled dogs out when the fire sprang to life on the evening of June 14. But he lost his house and all but a few trees when the fire jumped the Parks Highway north of town.

Ten acres of green spruce became a bleak thicket of soot-covered black bottle cleaners.

"You've gotta kiss a lot of it goodbye," Smith said this week, a stack of logs in the clearing where his new home will go. "That's just part of it. I had a nice little spot in the woods."

Difficult day

Tuesday marked a year past the date the fire destroyed more than 100 structures including 55 homes, incinerating some to such a fine dust it left everything from family heirlooms to daily minutiae unrecognizable.

The community will hold an event commemorating the anniversary of the fire on Saturday.

For many, it's a bittersweet time.

Sockeye destroyed fireproof safes and all-terrain vehicles, snowmachines and sled dog gear. Some residents lost dogs or other animals during the fire and the chaos that followed.

Outsiders who converged on Willow during the fire — volunteers, firefighters, humanitarian groups — praised the community's self-reliance and the way residents pulled together to help each other and make strangers feel welcome.

Neighbors rescued stranded dogs for owners who weren't home, sometimes sneaking past evacuation lines to salvage vital household items or see if someone's home still stood. Then they helped clear debris and burned trees as residents worked at different paces through the slow and still unfolding — and still difficult — recovery process.

"One year on the calendar does not mark the end of that recovery," the interagency, interfaith nonprofit Willow Recovery Team noted on its website this week. "One year, for some, may mark the question of whether or not the recovery will ever end. One year may bring doubts, frustration, and anger. One year may bring a renewed sense of the loss."

Most residents have rebuilt on scorched property but not all, according to Dan Wilcox, pastor at the Willow United Methodist Church and chair of the Willow Recovery Team. The team will hold a remembrance event for people whose lives were touched by the fire from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Willow Community Center.

The recovery team has had some part in the rebuild of about nine different homes and have tried to "fill in some gaps" with close to 20 others, Wilcox said.
"But there are a lot of people who are rebuilding on their own, or had some or a limited amount of insurance," he said. "Some people haven't been able to start yet. I know that we've done our best to try to reach out to as many as we can."

Cautionary tale

Many people had insurance; some — like Smith — did not. But even those with coverage realized it wasn't enough.

T.C. Wait and her husband lost a cabin next to Smith's. They live part of the year in Colorado but are planning to move their large recreational sled dog kennel permanently to Willow in the future.

Wait urged homeowners to know exactly what their insurance policy covers — and doesn't.

The couple had insurance and a good company to work with, she said. But their policy only covered about three-quarters of their losses.

"We are rebuilding. It's just hard. I don't think people realize," Wait said. "We got a lot of — 'Well, you've got insurance, you're fine. We don't need to worry about you.'"

Sue Firmin lost her primary home in the fire but didn't realize until it was too late that her insurance would end up covering only about a third of her rebuilding costs.

Firmin, an Iditarod veteran, said this week she ended her battle over the fire claim because the stress was giving her health problems. She is staying with her daughter in Fairbanks and no longer plans to move back to Willow.

Firmin urged homeowners to take photos or videos of possessions to make claim filing easier.

Prepare a list of priority items to grab in case of disaster. And double-check your homeowner's insurance policy before you need it.

"I kind of blame myself for the mess that I'm in, whether it's my fault or not," she said. "I would hate to see anybody else have to go through this."

Life in the black

Lacking insurance altogether, Smith knew he couldn't cobble together a loan in time to rebuild last summer before winter slammed shut his construction window. So the 46-year-old dog musher who moved to Willow in 2005 did the only thing he could.

He ran the Iditarod and finished in 10th place.

It was a difficult decision, Smith said, but ultimately he figured it wouldn't help his dogs to sit all winter and he was paying to feed and take care of them either way.

"It was good therapy for me," he said. "A lot of people go see a shrink or whatnot but for me that was probably the best thing in the world to be able to run Iditarod and have a good run on top of it."

Now Smith is staying with a friend and putting in long hours at his home site as he starts to rebuild a log home. He's doing most of the work himself.

His new landscape affords an "unintended" view toward the broad sloping shoulder of the Talkeetna Mountains.

"There are a lot of burnt trees between me and the view," Smith said. "Everybody thinks these trees will come down soon. They're going to be there for a while."