Wildland Fire Stories

Successful management of wildland fire is a team effort. National Park Service (NPS) staff in Alaska have formed a unique partnership with the Bureau of Land Management Alaska Fire Service (AFS), which has helped to turn challenges into opportunities, and increased operational efficiency in utilization of helicopters for fire suppression. This partnership has benefited not only Alaska, but also the wildland firefighting effort in several western states.

Denali National Park and Preserve plans to conduct prescribed burning of slash piles around the park entrance area between March 3 and May 1, 2025, dependent on weather and conditions on site.

The Tanana Chiefs Conference Fire Crew, which consists mostly of Alaskan Natives tribal members, joined with the NPS Alaska Region Eastern Area Fire Management Program to complete a fuels project in Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve during summer 2014 as part of NPS efforts to create fire-adapted human communities.

At 12:30 pm on Sunday, June 30, 2024, the Riley Fire was reported on Denali National Park and Preserve lands about one mile north of the park entrance, in the Nenana River canyon. Due to the extremely dry conditions, the fire grew quickly. Thanks to assistance from both local and out of state partners, fire protection agencies, and planning in advance for this type of scenario, the park was back to regular operations only 11 days after ignition.

In July 2024, fire ecologists re-visited a study area an in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve that burned twice in rapid series. The 2009 Chakina Fire burned ~ 56,000 acres in the Chitina River Valley. A mere seven years later, a third of the Chakina fire area reburned in the 2016 Steamboat Fire.

Northern Arizona University (NAU) graduate student Matt Behrens, with assistance from the NPS Alaska Western Area Fire Management Fire Ecology team, instrumented several of the piles with high-heat temperature sensors to record the flux of heat into the soil column. A first look at retrieved data showed a several hour delay in the transfer of heat through the organic-rich duff layers, and minimal soil heating effects beyond the pile edge.

The frontcountry of Denali National Park and Preserve has not experienced a significant wildland fire for 100 years. Given the expected fire interval in the dominant forest type is 60-120 years, NPS Alaska Western Area Fire Management staff brought together local park managers, major community stakeholders and regional suppression experts to discuss and prepare for what wildfire might look like in this area. A half-day simulation event took place in May 2024 in the park.

On June 26, the Alaska Fire Service reported the first wildfire in Denali National Park and Preserve for the 2019 season. The lightning-caused Foraker Fire (#389) was first detected by satellite and is located in the northwestern region of the park, between Birch Creek and Slippery Creek, approximately 30 miles southeast of Lake Minchumina. NPS firefighters used a park helicopter to size up the fire, reporting it to be 136 acres and 90% active, burning primarily in black spruce with some single tree torching.

Fires in the tundra happen less often than in the boreal forest. Fires can be sporadic and widely distributed. The years between fire events, called fire return intervals, vary widely from 30 years to over 1,000 years in the tundra.

Fire Management staff plans to burn piles of woody debris not suitable for firewood from Sunday, March 31, through Wednesday, April 3, 2024. The piles are located on NPS lands surrounding two allotments near Nation Bluff, below the confluence of the Nation and Yukon Rivers, approximately 53 miles downstream of Eagle along the Yukon River. Fire staff will ignite approximately 30 piles and monitor them over multiple days, until no heat remains. As this is a planned ignition, please do not report smoke from this prescribed burn as a wildfire.