Friday, June 22, 2007

Caribou Hills Fire

Cats lined up and making breaks. Things are under control on Homer side; out of control on Ninilchik end.

If you have heard about the forest fires in Alaska, there is a big one near us. As of now, it has burned 20,000 acres. It is in the hills about 10 miles NW of where we live. The first morning of the fire it looked like smog over the city of Homer. By the afternoon there was a huge, brown cloud obscuring the sun in an otherwise clear sky. Small amounts of ash fell on our house.

Day 2 there was no smoke visible from our house, but when we drove up the road one mile we could see huge billows of smoke. We drove above timberline and looked down on the fire area. The people whose house we are renting have cabins out in the area where the fire is heading. They were out there running firebreaks to save their cabins.

Day 2 cont. The Forest Service officially hired our landlord and his family to help fight the fire. They own a roadbuilding business and have the Cats and other heavy equipment needed to create firebreaks.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You were able to get some good pictures of the smoke. As we were driving back up to Anchorage we hit a few areas along the highway that were very smoky, especially in the valleys. We saw an unusual number of porcupines along the road too - all moving away from the smoke. Did you know they can climb trees?

Michelle Waclawski said...

We haven't been seeing any wildlife moving away from the fire on this side (Homer), though we have been looking for them. Yes, I have seen porkies climb trees--it's funny, isn't it?!