Keep those fingers crossed

Frontiersman staff

Our Opinion

Considering how little snow we've received this winter, several Valley communities got a bit of good news this week.

Big Lake, Butte, Houston, Lazy Mountain and Meadow Lakes are all potential recipients of federal funding to reduce the threat of wildfires.

When winter finally passes and we enter the dry months of May and June, we may be facing a particularly volatile summer unless we pick up a little precipitation now. Remember, it was the month of June when both the Miller's Reach and Lazy Mountain fires broke out.

The Mat-Su communities are just five out of 38 statewide, and even more nationally, that have been included on a preliminary list of places slated to receive some of $240 million in Congressionally funded appropriations for wildfire prevention.

Each of the communities is located in what fire officials call the "urban wildland interface" — those communities that are near public lands managed by several federal agencies, including Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife, and others.

The federal land management agencies worked with state organizations and agencies to develop initial definitions and criteria to identify communities that will benefit from special attention to reduce fire hazards.

This is great news, except that communities in the Lower 48 suffered far more than Alaska last year, and consequently, we're probably not going to see much of the windfall.

The lesson?

Even though it's winter, we still need to be careful about the potential danger of fire. It was only a couple of weeks ago that nearly 20,000 acres in Southwest Alaska went up in flames, and Kenai and Kodiak are also facing the same dangers.

A little federal funding to lessen the danger of springtime fires would be great. But barring that, maybe we can convince places like New England and the Midwest to take pity on Alaska, and ship us some of that snow they've been getting.