A lift from a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter and diminishing winds helped firefighters tame a wildfire near Dalasuga Island, about a half-mile north of Seduction Point.
The blaze, apparently touched off by a smoldering campfire there, scorched 1.5 acres and penetrated as deeply as 100 feet into the forest of Chilkat State Park.
“We had several trees torched. That’s extreme fire behavior,” said Greg Palmieri, who heads up wildfire suppression for the state Division of Forestry in Haines. That the blaze didn’t jump from treetop to treetop was most likely due to winds that died down during the afternoon.
“In terms of the fire response, the winds were ideal,” Palmieri said.
The Borough of Haines issued a ban on open burning the same day. Only fires in approved campground rings and in screened burn barrels are allowed until further notice. All burning in the townsite must be reported in advance to the police station.
South winds early Thursday apparently sent sparks airborne from an abandoned campfire on the isthmus between Chilkat Peninsula and the Dalasuga. After jumping about 30 feet from the campfire site, the blaze moved north from beach brush into the forest. Winds shifting from out of the north may have pushed it south and east.
Local airlines, people at Glacier Point and the Coast Guard helicopter called in the fire around 11 a.m. The Coast Guard chopper then ferried Palmieri, C.J. Jones and Randy Bachman to the site with salt-water pumps and thousands of feet of hose. They were on site by 1 p.m. and called in a Temsco helicopter from Skagway, which dumped about a dozen, 175-gallon buckets of sea water.
The borough’s harbor skiff, launched from Letnikof Cove, brought two additional firefighters and the fire was under control about 5:30 p.m. Crews spent an additional four hours on the site Thursday evening and Friday.
Palmieri said consecutive days of low humidity plus high winds push fire danger toward extreme.
In state parks, state firefighting crews are required to fully suppress blazes, Palmieri said, and people found responsible for starting fires can be held responsible for paying the entire cost of suppression. Palmieri had no immediate estimate of the fire’s cost.
Haines fire chief Scott Bradford said the blaze could have been much worse. “If the winds would have been out of the south, we’d be having (water) tankers here today,” he said Friday.
Palmieri said the campfire remains may have smoldered for days before strong winds early Thursday accelerated the blaze. “Nobody should ever leave a burning campfire,” he said.