Fire crews Wednesday morning mapped the Funny River fire out to be nearly 183,300 acres.
Tom Lavagnino, with the incident management team, says the rain has helped a little bit, but it’s not the biggest reason the fire’s growth has slowed.
“The bigger factor, probably, is there’s lack of wind,” Lavagnino said. “The first couple days and the aggressive growth period were due to wind-driven fire, and that hasn’t happened yesterday.”
Lavignino says the fire line along the western edge is well-established and secure. He also says a fuel break established by the community over the past several years has played a large role in containing the northern edge of the fire.
“Kudos to them,” Lavagnino said. “They’re very successful in stopping the fire and having retardant being able to reach the ground at that point and mitigate the fire so the hand crews can come in in the fire trucks and suppress the fire a little more – and safely.”
For now, most of the fire crews’ efforts will be on the northeast and eastern borders of the fire.
There are 713 personnel working on the Funny River fire.
All evacuation advisories in the area have been lifted.
There is a community meeting scheduled Wednesday night at 7 p.m. at the Funny River Community Center.
Josh is the Statewide Morning News Reporter/Producer for Alaska Public Media | jedge (at) alaskapublic (dot) org | 907.550.8455 | About Josh