Point MacKenzie wildfire contained, cause investigated

POINT MACKENZIE — By Saturday afternoon, crews battling a 45-acre wildfire in Point MacKenzie declared the fire contained.

“They called it contained at 12:43 (p.m.),” Norm Mcdonald, state Division of Forestry’s Mat-Su Area Fire Management Officer, said just about 2 p.m., before explaining what “contained” means in firefighting parlance.

“It’s not controlled where everything is 100 percent out, but it is contained where they’re pretty confident it won’t spread,” he said.

He said the fire would likely burn another four or five days before it’s completely out.

“One thing that’s going to slow it down a little bit is that we’re releasing one of the crews, Pioneer Peak, to a new fire start in Tok,” he said.

The state’s daily report of wildfire activity pegs the blaze as human-caused and says it was reported at around 6:34 p.m., Thursday and, according to the report, the initial caller was a private resident who described it as a grass fire threatening a home.

On Friday, McDonald said that while an investigation is still ongoing into what sparked the fire, it’s believed a campfire is the culprit.

“But we’re trying to confirm that,” he said.

Whether it was the home it initially threatened or a different one, officials say a cabin and a shed were consumed in the blaze.

The area is inaccessible to heavy fire trucks. Central Mat-Su Fire Department crews shuttled in on ATVs. The state’s Hotshot fire crews walked in. Forestry called in two air tankers that dropped loads of fire retardant and water on the blaze, as well as its air-attack helicopter that is used to haul buckets of water and dump them over forest fires.

“The fire is actually in on old burn scar from 2006, so there’s a lot of standing dead and dead-and-down,” McDonald said, in describing why the area is likely prone to fires.

Containing wildfires, when wind-blown embers can easily ignite dry fuels on the other side of the perimeter you’ve established is tricky business.

“With the dry grass there it doesn’t take much of a spark to get it going again,” McDonald said.

The state tends to fight fires statewide. One of the two air tankers to drop retardant on the Point Mac fire was called in from Fairbanks. Firefighters who had finished up fighting a remote fire west of the Susitna River were put to work on the Point MacKenzie fire and a Mat-Su-based crew that had been pre-positioned on the Kenai Peninsula to help with potential fires there was brought in as well.

Point MacKenzie is no stranger to forest fires. In 2006, 150 acres burned near Point MacKenzie Road when a downed tree landed on a power line. The conditions — including dry weather and high winds — led to a very fast spread with those 150 acres torching in less than an hour, according to Frontiersman reports from the time.

McDonald said that cooler temperatures and overcast skies helped firefighting efforts Friday and Saturday.

As of Saturday afternoon, the fire danger in Mat-Su had been dropped from “very high” to “high” and the days-long ban on burning lifted. Anyone who wants to start anything larger than a campfire still needs a permit — available at forestry.alaska.gov/burn — and is required to either check that website or call (907) 761-6312 before burning.

So far this year, Mat-Su is leading the state with the number of fires started but well behind other regions for number of acres burned. Thirty-one fires have started in the Anchorage/Mat-Su area and 61.4 acres burned. Southwest Alaska, meanwhile, has seen 1,913 acres burn with just 18 fires.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or

andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.