Yet another FIRE…

(This was written on July 6th)

In the neighborhood; this time the only thing that was lost was an outhouse and a lot of tundra. This happened yesterday at about 5pm. We think our neighbor, two cabins away, threw a cigarette in their outhouse which started the fire. Our neighbor was able to put the fire out on the outhouse but it had already spread to the tundra and due to the winds, was heading toward the west and our cabins. Thankfully the fire department showed up (again) and did everything they could to put it out and they were successful. The fire spread about one and a half miles before it was extinguished.
When I first saw the fire I drove down the beach to the fire chief who was at the bottom of the cliff to ask if we needed to evacuate. He said we should collect up our belongings and to know where they were in case we needed to leave right away but for now our cabins were safe. He also said there would be a helicopter coming any minute to dump water on the fire. He said if that didn’t take care of it they were going to send in a bomber to put retardant on it and if that didn’t work there last resort was to send in some smoke jumpers. I was glad to hear that they had a plan and drove back to camp to let the crew know. Within a few minutes (just enough time to grab the camera and run just beyond the edge of camp) the chopper had arrived with its bucket hanging below and began scooping water from a nearby lake (300 feet away) and dumping it on the fire. This seemed to do very little to the growing flames. The bucket he was using could probably only hold 200-300 gallons, we needed more firefighting power. After about half an hour a couple of firemen came out and told us to go back to our camp and that they were sending in the bomber. They explained that if we were in the way when the bomber dropped the retardant and if any part of it hit us we would be flattened like a pancake and killed instantly. We agreed and went back to camp to watch, hopping that they didn’t miss and destroy our remaining cabins. Within a few minutes the helicopter flew away and a couple of planes came by; one of them was a scout plane and the other was the bomber the fire chief had talked about. The bomber did three passes dropping fire retardant over the course of an hour and a half which made a pretty good impact on the flames. We watched all of the action from near the bunkhouse and a couple of the crew climbed up on the roof. After that we all needed some sleep so we went to our bunks to get some rest. Over the course of the next three hours we heard that there were about 8 smoke jumpers who came in and started paddling the ground with some sort of paddle/fan shaped tool. This morning we heard that they had successfully put the fire out and later in the evening we walked out to the burn site and took some pictures to show just how close it had come to our cabins. Thankfully there wasn’t too much damage and no one got hurt. We have been saved again by the local firefighters and we thank them for watching out for us. We are going to have to bake them some cakes and cookies.

-Sarah & the crew