Firefighters douse blaze threatening Cedar Hills subdivision

PALMER — Firefighters stopped a wildfire just before it spread into a subdivision full of homes Wednesday.

Palmer Emergency Services Director John Owen said at around 8 p.m. that the cause of the blaze or where it started was not yet apparent. It was phoned in at around 6:26 p.m. and reported as burning off of Palmer-Fishhook Road.

High winds quickly spread the fire and pushed it toward the Cedar Hills subdivision.

“It was coming right this way,” Sgt. Kelly Turney with the Palmer Police Department said on scene, pointing to a nearby hill.

Turney and other PPD officers were sent into Cedar Hills to give everyone notice that they might soon need to evacuate. The two homes closest to the fire at the corner of Pioneer Parkway and Williwaw Drive, were told they would definitely need to evacuate.

“Just as they were about to leave the fire department kind of got a handle on it,” Turney said.

The homeowners were allowed to stay, though some homeowners did evacuate.

By 7:30 p.m., Turney was mostly monitoring the radio and answering questions from worried onlookers. He said that in these situations police tell residents to gather up important items — medications, documents, pets — and an overnight bag and be ready to go.

Owen said the fire drew responders from the Palmer and Butte fire departments as well as a planning specialist from the Mat-Su Borough’s Department of Emergency Services and firefighters from the state’s Division of Forestry.

Forestry also sent in a helicopter, which dropped water on the fire and was, Owen said, very helpful. Firefighters attacked the blaze from the north and the south at the same time.

“The fire was stopped successfully within 200 to 300 yards of the subdivision,” Owen said, having just minutes prior congratulated Palmer firefighters on a job well done.

By around 8 p.m. it had been contained. Owen didn’t have an accurate estimate of how big the fire was. Chatter among responders over emergency band radios put it somewhere around four acres.

“It’s a visual estimate at this point,” Owen said. “Because of the topography it’s hard to tell.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.