Wear your seat belt, watch out for wildfires

MAT-SU — If you’re going to be out and about this Memorial Day weekend, here’s two pieces of friendly advice — wear your seatbelt and be careful with fire.

The seatbelt advice comes courtesy of the Wasilla Police Department, which will this weekend be running another of its semi-regular Inter-jurisdictional Task Force operations.

On Friday, Alaska State Troopers and Palmer police officers will join Wasilla for stepped up enforcement in city limits.

“Primary enforcement is going to be seat belt, but obviously if they see anything that they need to stop or issues to address they’re definitely going to address it,” said Sgt. Bill Rapson, who is coordinating the effort.

Funding for the overtime shifts comes from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Alaska Highway Safety Office. The push is part of a statewide seat belt campaign called Click it or Ticket.

On Saturday, the team will move to Palmer. Sunday will focus on the two safety corridors in the Valley — on the Parks Highway between Mile 44.5 and Mile 53, and on Knik-Goose Bay Road between miles 0.6 and 17.2.

As for fire danger, emergency band radios have been crackling all week with firefighters battling brushfires from Butte to Big Lake and points farther north. In the Valley, the overwhelming majority of these fires are human-caused. The Department of Natural Resources says that statewide, 70 percent of fires are human-caused.

As of Thursday afternoon, 68 fires had burned 29.8 acres in the Anchorage/Mat-Su area. Four of those were started on Wednesday and three were in the Valley.

If you’re going to set a fire larger than a campfire check and make sure you don’t need a burn permit. All of the information you need is online at forestry.alaska.gov/burn.

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