<\/a>Senior Fire Captain Nick Davis demonstrates nozzles Monday, April 24, 2023, to other firefighters in Anchorage, Alaska, learning how to fight wildland fires. A recent series of wildfires near Anchorage and the hottest day on record have sparked fears that a warming climate could soon mean serious, untenable blazes in urban areas — just like in the rest of the drought-plagued American West. (AP Photo \/ Mark Thiessen)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
This spring, 360 city firefighters are training on wildland firefighting tactics like using water hoses to create a line around the perimeter of a fire and the city is encouraging homeowners to participate in a program to identify hazards like brush and old trees that would feed a fire before it’s too late. In one hilly neighborhood, a community council is researching locations for a makeshift helipad that could be used for air evacuations.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
That same small neighborhood with but one road in and out has also discussed installing sirens to warn residents on the city’s wooded fringes of fire danger and hopes to build a database of all residents for emergency communications.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“As much as you wouldn’t want to do it … it’s like rolling the dice on being alive or dead,” said Matt Moore, who fled his home in 2019 lest he be trapped on the wrong side of the flames on the single road.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Such precautions — common in parched and fire-prone states like California and Colorado — are relatively new in Anchorage in the face of increased fire risk fueled by global warming. The city reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit four years ago, the city’s hottest temperature on record, and it’s had five significant wildfires over the past seven years that were all extinguished before causing much damage.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Still, the U.S. is headed into an El Nino year this season, which traditionally means a bigger fire year and further raises concerns, said Brian Brettschneider, a climate scientist with National Weather Service, Alaska Region.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
More than 4,844 square miles burned statewide last year — an area just under the size of Connecticut.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Since 1950, there have been 14 years in which more than 4,687 square miles — the equivalent of 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares) — have burned during Alaska’s short but intense fire season. Half of those fire seasons have occurred since 2002, including the worst year on record — 2004 — when over 10,156 square miles (26,304 square kilometers) burned.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
From his home high above Anchorage in 2019, Moore saw the black smoke billowing from a fire miles away in a heavily wooded area of the city. He gathered his pets and important papers in his vehicle — his wife was already safe in Anchorage — and drove 5 miles down the only road serving the roughly 600 neighborhood residents to safety.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
“Thankfully, they started getting it under control,” he said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
For now, both the city and Schrage’s fire department are focused on keeping things under control — implementing as many preventative measures as possible.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
The city department has removed evergreen trees and reduced brush in strips of 100 feet (30 meters) next to neighborhoods to help contain any future fires and Anchorage has cleared trees and other hazards in parks and along greenbelts.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Firefighters have also conducted inspections at people’s homes to identify fire hazards such as firewood kept too close to their homes or too much vegetation on their property — all in hopes of preserving homes, livelihoods and the community in a time of growing climate uncertainty.<\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is the new reality. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":98453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-98452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98452"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=98452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}