Description

The first fire of the 2010 fire season started on March 24th, in the Mat-Su Area. By the end of April there had been 48 fires. Since records of fires by month specifically started being kept in 1996 at AICC, that number has only been surpassed twice, in 1997, with 67 fires by the end of April, and in 1998 when there had been 97 fires by that time. There was one 'holdover' fire reported in April, a product of fires that retained enough heat over the winter to rekindle in the spring. Five more were reported in May, and three more in July. One of these, the Toklat fire started as a holdover from 2009, burned together with a lightning caused fire, and consumed over 188,000 acres by early June. Two fires from 2009, the Telida fire and the Wood River fire, had multiple holdovers. May proved to be the busiest month with a total of 229 fires. That is above the 10 year average of 141, but was less than 1996 with 326, and 2002 with 259 fires. The most acres burned in one day occurred on May 30th (93,052.0 acres) However, the most acreage burned in 2010 occurred in June (411,745 acres) and the most fires reported for one day was on June 23rd (33). The Anchorage Fire Department reported 51 fires for a total of 5.5 acres during the fire season, and 28 VFD fires throughout the state were reported for a total of 6.8 acres. There were a total of 688 wild land fires in 2010, with a total of 1,1,25,419 acres burned. Nearly one thousand residences were threatened by wild land fires this season, and five were lost. Approximately one thousand nine hundred outbuildings were threatened, and seven were lost. Sixty seven commercial enterprises were threatened, and 1 was lost.