Eight firefighters are battling a wildfire that broke out over the weekend about 30 miles outside of Haines.
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The Boulder Fire, first reported on Saturday, is burning on a steep, forested hillside along Little Boulder Creek near the Haines Highway. Firefighters flew over the area in a helicopter on Sunday to scope out the situation and to drop water from the Klehini River onto the blaze, which at the time was a quarter-acre large.
By Wednesday morning, the fire had grown to 2.75 acres. Forest Service spokesperson Paul Robbins said firefighters are working to secure the fire’s edges and hope to have it contained by Sunday.
He added that responders have determined the fire was human-caused, and an investigator is headed to Haines to learn more.
“The only thing the incident commander could give me until we get a fire investigator out there is we do know it’s human caused,” Robbins said. “But we don’t know exactly how.”
He said the responders include Tongass National Forest firefighters and the Alaska smokejumpers out of Fairbanks.
In a facebook post on Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. Wildland Fire Service noted the Boulder Fire marks the team’s first-ever fire jump in Southeast Alaska, where sizable wildfires are rare.
There are structures within a quarter mile of the fire, but Robbins said that it showed “minimal threat” as of Tuesday afternoon.
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State Forester Greg Palmieri, with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, is helping coordinate the response. He said preventing further downhill spread could be difficult given the area’s steep, dangerous terrain.
“There’s plenty of fuel on that slope that can ignite with the embers rolling downhill. And they’re trying to suppress that with the helicopter buckets,” he said. “It’s really too hazardous to get people down there to try to put that out, so that’s going to be their biggest challenge.”
Palmieri said wildfires often happen when people start a campfire and don’t successfully put it out.
“The heat penetrates into the rock below in a significant way, and even if you feel like you have cold ash or coals on top of your fire when you leave, it’s quite likely that there’s still heat contained underneath,” he said.
The Klehini Valley Volunteer Fire Department has also been assisting with logistics, including helicopter landing zones. Chief Richard Gunick did not respond to a request for comment.
Over the weekend, the Haines Volunteer Fire Department raised local wildfire danger to high and has suspended all burn permits. Both are still in place, though campfires in fire rings and barbecues are still allowed.
Authorities are asking locals to avoid the area, including with aircraft and drones. If any aircraft do enter the area, the response helicopters can’t fly.
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