KUAC - Fairbanks

Twenty-nine homes, along with 34 other structures, have been lost in the fires near Healy since they began last month, borough officials said Tuesday. Officials say that no structures have burned in the Fairbanks North Star Borough.

So far this week, scattered rain and cooler weather have been helping firefighters protect homes and infrastructure from the Interior wildfires. Over 200 fires are burning across the state, but firefighters are concentrating their efforts on the roughly two dozen that are threatening residential areas.

Meanwhile, smoke from the fires is a growing health concern. Air quality levels in Fairbanks dropped into the “unhealthy” range early this week. The city is shrouded in a pale haze that smells like a campfire, and borough officials are urging people to stay inside as much as possible.

Alaska Division of Forestry spokesperson Liv Stecker says she’s been asked a lot about whether recent rain will also help clear up the air. She says that unfortunately, that’s not the case.

“It kind of creates this blanket, this weight, the increased humidity that traps smoke in lower levels a little bit,” she said. “So you have kind of this smoky, humid condition around Fairbanks and beyond where the fires are impacting, which can definitely help slow fire behavior, but it decreases that air quality.”

Kaitlin Wilson is a spokesperson for the Fairbanks North Star Borough mayor’s office. She says the borough has opened its breathing room at the local public library, where residents can get a break from the smoke during regular business hours.

“As long as we’re having these unhealthy smoke levels, unhealthy air quality, we’re just urging residents to stay inside, limit prolonged exertion in the smoke,” she said.

Rain showers are expected to continue throughout the week, with a chance of thunderstorms. Fire activity is still slowing traffic on parts of the Parks and Elliott Highways, and drivers should expect delays.

A gravel road runs along the edge of HAARP’s array – that matrix of giant radio antennas on the tundra that’s been blamed for everything from the 2010 Haiti earthquake to chronic fatigue syndrome. On June 14, Fairbanksan Carl Triplehorn stood by that road crafting a hat out of tinfoil. Then Jessica Matthews, HAARP’s director, handed him a big picture frame to pose with.

It’s fair to say that HAARP’s staff is in on the joke.

“Some of the best calls I get are from people that tell me, ‘I have a wedding that’s coming up. Can you guys help us out with the weather?’ Matthews said.

Scientists at the Gakona-based High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program — known everywhere as just HAARP — open their doors once a summer to show the public what they’re up to.

It wasn’t the facility’s first open house, but it was the first since the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Geophysical Institute took complete possession of HAARP from the military this year — a process that started a decade ago.

The military built HAARP in the 90s to conduct atmospheric defense research. These days, scientists mostly use it to look into things like space weather, and how gravity acts on the ionosphere, the highest layer of Earth’s atmosphere.

Matthews said security around there used to be much tighter, which probably fed the intrigue.

“Back in the Air Force days, when you came up to that gate, you saw that scary, big red warning sign: ‘No Trespassing,'” she said.

HAARP’s shadowy reputation has been hard to shake

Speculation about what happens there runs pretty wild. Some believe the facility is trying to do everything from reversing Earth’s magnetic poles to trapping people’s souls.

And sometimes those ideas are endorsed by public figures. Like last year, when prominent far-right activist Laura Loomer accused HAARP of creating a blizzard to blow then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s chances in the Iowa caucuses.

Matthews said the open houses pull the curtain back on what they’re really doing.

“Events like this give them an opportunity to actually ask some of those hard questions of the researchers and get an answer,” she said.

The people who work at HAARP are more than happy to talk about their research and day-to-day grind — when the mics are off. Most are wearing buttons that say, “No photos, please.” All of that is to safeguard against harassment and credible threats — which they do get from time to time.

“I take very seriously my obligation to protect our staff to the best of the ability that we can in every discussion that we have, in every meeting that we have,” Matthews said.

Taking off the tinfoil — and teaching the public about space physics

The idea behind the event isn’t just about clearing up dangerous misunderstandings. The scientists want to share what they’ve been learning about the upper atmosphere by beaming massive amounts of radio waves at it.

UAF physicist Craig Heinselman said the facility is like the “world’s best screwdriver” to poke at nearest space.

“Being able to steer the beam in various directions in very short time frames, transmitting at different frequencies,” he said. “The radio waves that are transmitted can also be polarized — kind of like polarized filters on your glasses — and they have different effects.”

He and his colleagues are looking into things that have practical applications, too. They’re studying how space weather interacts with the ionized layer of the atmosphere, which can sometimes disrupt GPS signals.

“We’re working on the basic research to get to there, but eventually we hope to get there and have better space weather prediction,” he said.

For Triplehorn — the guy with the tinfoil hat — that educational aspect was the biggest draw. And that’s true for most of the hundred or so guests, like UAF chemistry student Aggy Boldt.

“I think I’m just trying to explore my options, like what kind of career I could go into with chemistry,” she said. “I think it’s just cool to see what everyone else is doing and learn more about it.”

After a day packed with science talks, drone demonstrations, and walking tours that wound through the facility’s cavernous engine room and up to the array, Matthews, the director, said it was another successful outreach event.

“I’m thrilled that we had young kids that were asking for balloons and asking if they could steal two or three cookies for their siblings,” she said. “This is what I want to see.”

She says that she hopes each open house event makes the facility a little less frightening to the public.

“It’s just Alaskans that are helping to do some really cool science,” she said.

Wildfire activity exploded across Interior Alaska late last week amid widespread red flag warnings and the state’s first-ever heat advisory.

Dozens of lightning- and human-caused fires have started, intermittently closing major highways and leading to the evacuations of hundreds of people around Fairbanks, Healy and Tok. Some homes and other structures have burned, but it is not clear yet how many.

A spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska Fire Service said in an email that experienced wildfire managers have told her that this year “feels different.”

“What stands out is the number of fires immediately threatening communities – and the number of evacuations happening simultaneously – which they say is unprecedented,” Beth Ipsen said.

Cooler, wetter weather is in the forecast, but a spokesperson for the Alaska Forestry Division cautioned that Alaskans should not expect that to slow down the fires very much.

“The rains that are in the forecast now for us, with this cool weather, is pleasant,” Sam Harrel said. “But it’s not going to be enough rain to end the current wildland fire situation. It may slow it down a little bit — it may give firefighters more of an opportunity to actively engage with a fire.”

Bear Creek Fire

The Bear Creek Fire, near Healy, is burning on both sides of the Parks Highway, which is the main artery connecting Fairbanks to Anchorage. Ipsen said the fire is the state’s top priority.

Harrel said that fire, which was discovered on June 19, was caused by lightning and fueled by wind.

“It grew rapidly towards the north along the Parks Highway,” he said. “There’s a lot of thick black spruce stands in that area, and that area has had challenging wildland fires for the past several years.”

Denali Mayor Chris Noel said borough officials do not have a comprehensive count yet, but they know that some homes have burned. Noel did not have a count of how many people have been evacuated.

Heather McGrorty said she lives five miles north of the Bear Creek Fire. She and her husband knew they had to act when they saw the fire had crested the ridge at June Creek.

“We had to start getting everything ready,” she said. “We have three big, large pools that we had to fill up, put sprinklers out and start moving stuff around the yard to be able to keep it safe.”

McGrorty said she has asthma and on Saturday she evacuated with her two daughters, 8 and 12, to stay with family in Healy. She said her husband stayed to clear their 40-acre property and cut trees.

“He is protecting our home,” she said. “We don’t really live anywhere else. We’re there all year round. Whether we have 10 feet of snow or the fire, we try not to leave.”

Harrel said the fire had jumped the Parks Highway and is burning on either side of the road. He said that, as smoke and fire conditions allow, pilot cars are leading groups of motorists through the fire area between mile markers 259-278. But he encouraged people traveling between Anchorage and Fairbanks to take the long way around.

“We’ve told a lot of people how to get to Fairbanks by taking the Glenn Highway over to Glenallen and then going north up to Delta and coming around,” he said. “It’s a beautiful scenic drive. It’s a little longer, but it’s not impacted by the fires like the Parks Highway has been.”

Evacuations near Fairbanks

About 200 households in the Fairbanks area have been evacuated from neighborhoods north and west of town. Residents of several other neighborhoods on the fringes of the city are under less severe notices to prepare to evacuate from smaller fires, like the Nenana Ridge Complex.

Fairbanks Borough Mayor Grier Hopkins said no structures have burned in the borough so far, but there were some close calls over the weekend in the vicinity of the Himalaya Road Fire, just northeast of town.

“There were six homes that were protected by firefighters — burned right up to the edge of the home and the property,” he said. But even though the firefighters couldn’t see maybe 20, 30 feet, they were still able to protect those homes.”

Sharon Baker said she was at her log cabin at the lower end of Haystack Mountain, less than a mile from the Elliott Highway, when the Himalaya Road Fire broke out. She said she was working outside and saw tall, billowing clouds of smoke rising above her cabin. Later, Baker got a “Go Now” evacuation alert.

“I already had clothes, tax and other important documents as well as a bag of toiletries by my front door. I grabbed them and other items and left,” she said. “I was prepared.”

Baker evacuated with her neighbor to nearby Hilltop Gas Station, which has a large parking lot.

“We remained there, while I was in touch with other neighbors who I knew were packing to leave but declined help. Quite a few of us from Haystack Mountain arrived shortly after receiving the alert.”

Baker said she was able to return to her home the next morning. But she was deeply touched by the many people who offered rooms in their homes and help with evacuating people, equipment and animals.

“This is a community that takes care of each other,” she said.

Now over 3,000 acres, the Himalaya Road Fire is the state’s second highest firefighting priority, behind the Bear Creek Fire. A federal firefighting crew is traveling up to Alaska from the Lower 48 to help contain it.

The borough’s animal shelter is currently open to taking in evacuees’ pets. The borough is also offering hotel vouchers through the Red Cross for people who have had to flee the fire. Hopkins said that if the number of evacuees continues to climb, the borough will consider setting up a shelter.

Seven Mile Lookout Fire

Further south, residents of the Tok neighborhoods near Butch Kuth Avenue, Osprey, Moose Nugget, and Goshawk Road were asked to evacuate this morning due to the uncontained Seven Mile Lookout Fire southwest of town. A community wildfire meeting will be held today at 6:00 PM at the Tok Dog Mushers Association

More crews expected from the Lower 48

The fires grew rapidly during a spell of hot weather that led the National Weather Service to issue Alaska’s first-ever heat advisory. But the area was already primed for intense wildfires.

“Even though we had a cool May and start of June, we weren’t getting much rain, so the forest was drying out,” said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “The duff — that organic material that’s right on the ground — that accumulates year after year because we have very slow decomposition rates. Which means there’s lots of fuel available.”

Thoman said the dry fuel, hot weather and abundant lightning all contributed to the fires.

“Thunderstorms were able to form each afternoon, and because it was a slow changing pattern, we got day-after-day of lots of thunderstorms,” he said. “Most areas that were getting lightning were getting little or no rain.”

Thoman pointed out that fires like this are nothing new in Alaska, but intense wildfire behavior should be expected more and more frequently as the climate changes.

“Wildfire is a natural part of the northern boreal ecosystem, but we’ve seen much more fire in recent years — especially the frequency of those big seasons and these explosive periods within the fire season,” he said.

Harrel, of the Alaska Division of Forestry, said more firefighters are on their way from the Lower 48 to help the Alaska crews already fighting the fires.

“We have a jet load coming to Fairbanks with four hot shot crews on it, and those crews will be assigned to fires that are highest in priority based on defense of life and defense of property.” he said.

He said more crews would be flying in on Wednesday, but they hadn’t firmed up the staffing for flight planned for Friday yet.

“We are also in competition with the lower 48 for resources, and as their fire season starts to grow and escalate, it becomes challenging,” he said.

The Anchorage Fire Department is also sending up seven volunteer firefighters to help suppress the Bear Creek Fire near Healy.

Meanwhile, Harrel said road highway closures are in flux, so travelers should check conditions by calling 511 before heading out.

“Don’t drive into dense smoke,” he said. “You have no idea what’s in there.”

Alaska Public Media’s Chris Klint contributed reporting.

A wildfire in northeastern British Columbia has led to intermittent closures on the Alaska Highway since it started burning last week.

The 70-mile stretch of highway west of Ft. Nelson had reopened to single-lane traffic as of Wednesday afternoon, but the BC Wildfire Service says circumstances could change quickly depending on how the Summit Lake Wildfire behaves.

Cell service is limited in much of the burn area. The wildfire service urges travelers to prepare for delays and consider downloading the BC Wildfire app for updates on conditions.

The fire has torched over 6,000 acres in the Northern Rockies since it started on May 28, and it’s nowhere close to being contained, according to the fire service.

Forty-seven firefighters are on the scene with helicopter support. The wildfire service suspects that lightning ignited the fire, which has spread quickly due to a multi-year drought.

There are a number of other fires in the area, and the wildfire service expects them to spread farther as windy weather moves in later this week.

National Park Service rangers recovered the body of a ski mountaineer on Wednesday who fell 3,000 feet to his death off the West Buttress of Denali.

The agency identified the victim as 41-year-old Alex Chiu of Seattle.

Denali National Park and Preserve spokesperson Amber Smigiel said it’s likely that Chiu died after he slipped from a ledge and fell onto the rocky face of the Peters Glacier.

“His body was found at the bottom of the 3,000-foot slope of the glacier,” she said.

In 2010, an un-roped French mountaineer fell to his death near the same location, park officials said.

Chiu was one of three ski mountaineers who set out on an expedition Monday to ascend the peak, recently renamed Mount McKinley by President Trump. When they reached the 12,000-foot level, two of the mountaineers saw Chiu fall at a spot along the icy and steep portion of the route called Squirrel Point.

Smigiel said the incident occurred while Chiu was descending, but she said park officials aren’t sure where they were headed.

“We still don’t know whether they were attempting to summit, whether they did summit. All we know is that he was on his descent,” she said.

According to park officials, the two remaining expedition members lowered themselves over the edge of the West Buttress as far as possible, but were unable to see or hear the missing mountaineer. So they descended the route to seek additional help, and on Tuesday afternoon were at Camp 1, where they were being treated and evaluated by a ranger team.

Smigiel said the two were planning to fly out of Base Camp 1 on Wednesday.

She said an investigation into the incident is ongoing.

The park service said there are currently 500 climbers on the mountain. The climbing season typically runs from early May to early July.

Bad weather has halted a search for a 41-year-old mountaineer who remains missing after falling Monday off the West Buttress of Denali.

National Park Service spokesperson Amber Smigiel said a ground search was called off Tuesday after heavy winds and snow set in on the mountain, recently renamed Mount McKinley by President Trump. She said rangers are monitoring conditions every hour in hopes the weather will break so they can restart the search.

“It’s windy and snowing in the area, so we have not been able to send out either ground or aerial crews,” Smigiel said. “So everyone’s on standby, waiting for the weather to clear.”

Smigiel said three ski mountaineers set out on an expedition Monday to ascend the peak. She said when they reached the 12,000-foot level later in the afternoon, two of the mountaineers saw the third member fall at a spot along the trail called Squirrel Point. They said he fell towards the rocky, 3,000-foot face of Peters Glacier.

“But we don’t know how far he fell,” she said. “There was no visual confirmation from the other members of his team as to where he landed.”

According to a Park Service news release, the two remaining expedition members lowered themselves over the edge of the West Buttress as far as possible, but were unable to see or hear the missing mountaineer. So they descended the route to seek additional help, and on Tuesday afternoon were at Camp 1, where they were being treated and evaluated by a ranger team.

Smiegel declined to identify the missing mountaineer, but said he’s a Washington resident. None of the three expedition members were roped together, a precaution the Park Service highly recommends when climbing the mountain.

Smigiel said the Park Service hopes to resume ground and air search Wednesday. Search efforts remained suspended for the morning, she said.

KTNA’s Andrew Gelderman contributed information to this story.