Marina Brooks was traveling the Sterling Highway from Anchorage to her home in Anchor Point Sunday night with her husband and three children, when shifting winds drove the Swan Lake fire toward the road.
"One moment we were driving through the hazy, dense smoke, and the next thing we were driving through what I would consider to be hellfire," she said. "It was just orange, it was bleak, the wind was insane, the trees were on fire."
As with closures last week of the Parks Highway around the McKinley fire that created massive logistical challenges along the state's main artery, safety officials are trying this week to strike a balance on the Sterling Highway between serious fire hazards and hours-long traffic delays that have left people stranded and desperate, fire managers said in a presentation they streamed Monday on Facebook.
"If you're going to travel that road, you might see flames, there's going to be smoke," said Andy Lyon, the information officer attached to the Swan Lake Fire. "It's not a normal situation. We're trying to keep it open for you, we're trying to keep you safe. If you don't feel comfortable with smoke and flames on the side of the road, probably not a good time to be traveling that road."
Sunday night, the highway was particularly harrowing.
In an expletive-laden video posted to Reddit late Sunday night by user AK_grown_XX, a driver and passenger navigate halting-then-speeding traffic as they pass within what looks like a few dozen yards of towering yellow flames devouring spruce trees next to the road.
"I don't think people should be driving right now," says a person holding a cellphone and shooting a video of a dark road leading their car closer and closer toward stands of burning trees.
"Oh my god, dude, this is so scary," says the driver.
"You feel that heat?" the passenger asks as the car speeds past the blaze.
"Do they know that it's that bad?" she asks.
(The video contains strong language)
Brooks, who was traveling to Anchorage Point, said other vehicles along the road alternated between slow rubber-necking and then rapid acceleration, adding another variable to the smoke. That section of the drive normally takes 20 minutes, but she guessed Sunday night it was closer to 45, punctuated by periods where the heat battered the car so intensely that it was hard to breath.
"Depending on which side of the car the fire was on when we were going through, that side definitely felt it more," Brooks said.
Read more: 2019 wildfire coverage
By Monday morning, people who experienced the flare up firsthand shared horror stories on Facebook. Several questioned why officials had let people transit the road at all. They described burning debris falling on vehicles, dense smoke, flames, heat.
With no alternative road connecting communities like Kenai, Soldotna, and Homer to the rest of the railbelt, officials must do their best to forecast fire conditions against the travel needs of local residents, Lyon said.
Fire managers closed the road just a few cars behind Brooks once the flames got too bad Sunday night. But she has no bad feelings about how scary the situation got for her and her family.
"I wouldn't put any blame at all on the (Division of) Forestry or the firefighters. They are doing the best job that they possibly can do. And it is nobody's fault what situation you end up in," she said. "We thought that it would be safer than it was. Surely the Forestry (Division) thought that it would be safer than it was."
Fire officials say traffic along the Sterling Highway will remain severely delayed from the Swan Lake fire, and subject to closure at any time. They're asking anyone who doesn't need to transit the impacted areas to stay off the road.