HOT AFTERNOON

KNIK — The first significant brushfire of the season ended without injury or significant property damage.

Fire crews were called to the scene early Friday afternoon and found wind pushing flames into dry grass and trees. At least two homes were threatened. A Division of Forestry helicopter dumped load after load of water on the fire.

Fire officials said Saturday the fire atop a hill at the end of Carmel Road in the area west of Knik-Goose Bay Road near Mile 10 was contained.

“There were homes threatened and buildings threatened, but nothing was burned and no one was hurt.” Forestry Spokesman Glen Holt said Friday.

According to the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center’s Web site, the fire was contained by 8:35 p.m. Friday. Crews remained on scene to monitor the fire and mop up. The Web site described the fire as human-caused.

“The cause for that fire is still under investigation,” Holt said. “Some of those things we don’t always arrive at concrete conclusions.”

He noted there had been a similar fire in the same spot last year. He said an area having been burned over doesn’t necessarily make it more prone to fires but Forestry officials start to take notice if human-caused fires become repeat problems.

“These things, they just bear looking into,” Holt said.

Johnny Murdock, who works for the borough’s Department of Emergency Services and was in charge of safety at the fire, said on scene that if the blaze was as big as they were saying at the time – three to four acres – it was probably the biggest wildfire he’s been to so far this year.

Holt, in a press release, said that the fire had since grown to more than nine acres.

Forestry and borough trucks on scene were augmented by heavy equipment that neighbors pulled out to help. A bulldozer stripped a swath of land to bare dirt to build a fire line. Someone came out of a nearby driveway in what appeared to be an old military pickup with monster truck tires.

Murdock radioed to crews closer to the flames that “an interesting piece of equipment” was available if needed.

Other neighbors stood in the road downhill from the fire, watching the flames warily, snapping photos and swapping fire stories.

“I guess you know it’s summertime when there’s a fire at the end of the road,” one joked.

John Mahoney said one of the homes threatened in this fire – barely visible through the smoke from where he stood – was a replacement for one that burned awhile back.

The area was heavily hit during the Miller’s Reach fire that burned 37,366 and burned more than 400 structures in Knik and Big Lake in 1996. The home Mahoney was watching wasn’t one of them. Miller’s Reach burned right by it. But a different fire a different year wasn’t so merciful.

Evidence of the area’s propensity to burn was apparent in the charred trees that still stood here and there at the foot of the grassy hill.

Mahoney said he chose not to evacuate during Miller’s Reach. He hid in the woods when they were clearing his area. He stayed to protect his log home. Fires, he said, make him nervous.

“Every time I see smoke I come running, I don’t like to leave my house when I see smoke,” Mahoney.

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