Wildfire's smoke smothers Mat-Su

Shifting winds drive noxious haze back toward Kenai

July 17, 2005

DAWN DE BUSK\Frontiersman reporter

MAT-SU -- Acrid smoke from a forest fire burning on the Kenai Peninsula rolled into the Valley early Friday afternoon, settling between mountains surrounding Mat-Su and irritating residents' eyes, throats and lungs.

By Saturday morning, the lightning-ignited Fox Creek fire had expanded to 19,300 acres, but to Valley residents' relief, shifting winds by then had whisked much of the smoke from that fire out of Mat-Su.

The smoke on Friday seemed especially bothersome to people living in Meadow Lakes, Big Lake and Point MacKenzie.

The smoke, which drifted into the Mat-Su Borough and the Anchorage Bowl, originated from a 400-acre forest fire that started July 11 on the south shore of Tustumena Lake, Matt Weaver, a Division of Forestry fire information officer, said Friday.

An unrelated fire at Point MacKenzie touched off rumors that a massive local blaze was generating the choking smoke in the area, Weaver said. That fire started at 8 a.m. in a wood-scrap pile in the Point MacKenzie sawmill yard and firefighters contained it at around 2 p.m. Friday, Weaver said.

"The phone's been ringing off the hook," Weaver said Friday. "We tell them what the source of the smoke is, and then I tell them to call two neighbors. It eases their minds about the safety of their homes and pets."

Andy Brown, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, explained that when the winds shifted from the northeast and started blowing from the south early Friday morning, the forest-fire smoke pumped into Anchorage and the Valley. Southeast winds along Turnagain Arm picked up speed Friday night, pushing the smoke west over the Arm, sending it back toward Kenai and Soldotna.

"As thick as this smoke is, I hate to say it'll stick around. We'll have to see how much it dissipates with the wind. But there's a lot of smoke with a fire that big," Brown said Friday.

The Mat-Su Borough issued an air quality alert Friday morning, but upgraded it to unhealthy to hazardous by the afternoon, according to Pam Graham, administrative secretary with the borough's department of planning and land use. Such a warning means children, senior citizens and people with heart or lung diseases should stay indoors, while everyone else should avoid vigorous activity outdoors, she said.

"Reports are coming in from Wasilla and the Meadow Lakes area because people are having a hard time breathing," Graham said Friday.

Receptionists at Valley Hospital and the Family Health Center said they saw an increase in patients with asthma, especially among the elderly.

Day-care centers followed protocol and kept children inside.

The Children's House, which was caring for between 25 and 30 kids Friday, routinely checks the air quality hotline before taking kids outdoors.

Other centers follow similar practices.

"It's way too smoky. We're doing indoor play," a day-care provider with Kidzone Daycare and Learning Center, Shalona Roseborough, said Friday.

Contact Dawn De Busk at 352-2252 or dawn.debusk@

frontiersman.com.