Impressions from a fire zone

   

This is Camp Caswell the way I prefer to remember it.

I went to the East Pole Saturday Sept. 7, to bring back a couple of things and take some measurements for some improvements I want to make here to take out when I go for the winter.
     The driving part of the trip is mostly along the Parks Highway, the main ground link between Anchorage and Fairbanks, and also the site of a huge wildfire that burned over 3,288 acres and is still smoldering in places. The fire destroyed 52 primary residences, three commercial properties and 84 outbuildings, but so far no reported injuries or deaths.
     On the road north coming out of Willow the first indications of fire are the rows of blackened spruce trunks lining the roadway on both sides,. only these were from a a previous fire a couple of years ago. It took a moment to realize it.
     After another 10 miles the first indications of this fire became painfully obvious. At almost every driveway or public building signs thanked the fire crews over and over again. It was heart warming. It hit me we don't have many public figures to cheer these days and seeing the outpouring of gratitude for the effort put out by the firefighters was monumental.
     Soon enough I started to pass blackened spruce trees still standing but obviously burned, lining the roadside.
   Then came the yards with houses still standing but brush and trees cleared around them, taken by the men and women of the fire crews so there was no fuel for the fire as it progressed toward the buildings. This was the south end of the fire which burned after the massive mobilizations of people and equipment to fight the flames. The bulk of the damage  occurred toward the north end around Mile 91 and several miles south of there. In that area the fire burned more freely and destroyed more buildings before the crews arrived in any number.
     I passed several houses untouched by the fire in the center of the wide, cleared areas made by firefighters that saved them from the flames.
    As I craned to look into each yard I managed to wander from side to side in my lane. That's when I learned something else. The sound of tires rolling over those safety rumble strips at the road edges blend perfectly with the more ethereal of Pink Floyd instrumentals and it took a moment to realize some of the sound wasn't coming from the stereo. I think Roger Waters' 70th birthday was yesterday or today; should I let him know about this discovery of a complementary sound the group could use?
      Symbols that demonstrated the tremendous amount of work that went on were everywhere. Of course there were the cleared yards, but also piles of spruce trunks cut for fire lines or whatever other reason lined the road for miles — tons. Here's a heartening image, very selfish and personal I admit. Almost all the downed trees were spruce and among those still standing white birch trunks stood out among the blackened spruce as if untouched by the fire. I noticed there were not nearly as many birch in the piles of cut trees as well. Why heartening? The majority of the forest around the East Pole is old growth birch, apparently more fire resistant than their softer-wooded cousins. Maybe that will save me if a fire eventually starts up in my country which is about 30 miles from the northernmost limit of the McKinley fire.
     Farther north I came through the area hardest hit. Yards that had held homes looked like landfills, the possessions of a lifetime reduced to blackened trash by the fire.
     Excavators worked in several yards clearing what the fire left behind and groups of firefighters remained looking for what I assumed were hot spots and directing water streams from fire hoses.
     For perhaps five miles, the speed limit had been reduced to a double-fine-enforced 45 mph and signs all over the place warned travelers about fire equipment in the road.
     Particularly sad was the property where the Camp Caswell  establishment had stood. That's it in its former grandeur in the photo above, long a landmark aside that part of the road, the space it had filled now looks like a combination of a bomb crater and an auto salvage yard, the charred skeletons of several vehicles decorating the bleak landscape.
     In one clearing stood the yellowish wood framing skeleton of a someone's new cabin going up already. On the news later I heard a 68-year-old man talking about hearing explosions from his cabin letting him know everything was gone. He wondered aloud about rebuilding from scratch again in his life and wondering if his aging body can do it. As a man approaching 77 years, I wondered if I would have the strength and will to do that. I thought of a couple boxes of ammunition in my own cabin and for a moment wondered what that would sound like going up. Something you don't often think of when you see the people fighting those fires in buildings, knowing just about every dwelling in that area holds a gun or two and that means live rounds to explode while they worked.
     Flaggers protected the entry from a side road where a sign warned drivers "Fire equipment crossing" and then the speed limit rose to 55 then 65 and those of us on the road passed out of the fire zone, humbled somewhat by what we'd seen and the dirge-like tones of one of those Pink Floyd instrumentals with the haunting sounds of their lingering guitar licks creating an atmosphere of mourning for what was lost there. Then, too, there was that one ray of human resilience rising from the skeletal framework of that one new dwelling rising.

I couldn't stop to take pictures. This link will take you to a gallery of photos of the fire area from the Anchorage Daily News.
Complete McKinley fire roundup