Western

A historically massive wildfire is threatening four villages on the Yukon River. On June 12, the fire was within 3.5 miles of one of those villages, and many people had evacuated. Residents who chose to stay have been pitching in to keep their communities from burning.

Pamela Tai stood over the stove in the home she shares with 11 family members. They’ve all chosen to stay despite the fire’s proximity to the village. Outside the kitchen window, smoke blanketed the Yukon and Andreafsky Rivers. Tai was making meatballs.

“Just makin’ my balls. Balls of glory! Hamburger balls and gravy over rice. That’s what’s for dinner,” she said.

Tai had been cooking all day. Earlier, it was a big pot of goulash. She donated that to the firefighters for dinner.

“I make it with love, honey, with love. So when they eat, they fill themselves up with lots of love,” Tai said.

Like Tai, many women in St. Mary’s have been cooking for the 130 firefighters in the village, lugging meals to a makeshift distribution center each evening. From there, the food gets sent to firefighters’ camps on the outskirts of town.

Out on the tundra, they’ve been digging wide lines of defense to try to prevent the fire from reaching town.

Tai’s 17-year-old son Cameron has been helping too, along with other men in the community. Older men cut down trees that younger men drag to the river. They’ve been clearing brush away from critical structures so that if the fire does reach the town, they won’t burn. Cameron said that doing this work gives him mixed feelings.

“It was really good to see most of the community and most of the men who live here work together. It was fun, but it is kinda scary. But we’re being cautious, and we at least did a little something for our community. And I just pray and hope that nothing gets any worse than this,” Cameron said.

The fire has more than doubled in size over the past four days and is threatening St. Mary’s, Pitkas Point, Pilot Station, and Mountain Village. Climate specialist Rick Thoman said that at 121,831 acres, this is the biggest wildfire the region has ever seen and the second largest Alaska tundra fire in 40 years. Thoman said that a warming climate has contributed to this fire’s fast spread. Over the past century, the Y-K Delta has warmed three times as quickly as the lower 48.

Local officials estimate that about half the community evacuated on June 9 and 10. Evacuation flights were offered to Elders and vulnerable people the first two days. Others left by boat, bound for downriver villages or fish camps. Evacuations have been optional so far, but that could change.

Grandfather and Elder Mike Joe Sr. is Cameron Tai’s grandfather and Pamela Tai’s father. His recliner is parked in front of the TV and he’s watching St. Mary’s on the local news. He said that he wants the whole family to stay as long as possible because he thinks leaving would be hard on the kids, but he said that it wasn’t an easy decision.

“Nobody wants to see smoke and loneliness out there,” said Joe Sr., gesturing out the window.

He said that he’s prepared to evacuate if the fire reaches his backyard.

“We got the boats all ready, got our grub and everything,” said Joe Sr.

Most of the family’s possessions are packed in their boat at the harbor. Their food is next to the front door, staged in 5-gallon plastic buckets they can grab in case they need to run out the door. Their plan is to boat across the Yukon River and camp out until it’s safe to return.

Besides this fire, which officials have dubbed the East Fork Fire, there are more than 20 tundra fires burning around the Y-K Delta. Several are less than 15 miles from villages.

As a tundra fire moved closer to St. Mary’s and Pitkas Point on Friday, federal officials urged residents of the lower Yukon River communities to pack essential belongings and plan a way to get out if needed.

The fire was five miles from St. Mary’s on Friday night. It had spread about two miles closer during the day, driven by 30 mph gusts across dry grass, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy has issued a disaster declaration in response to the fire, which has grown to an estimated 71,000 acres over the last week and a half, according to satellite data.

More than 700 people live in St. Mary’s and Pitkas Point. A road connects the two communities. About 80 residents chose to fly from St. Mary’s to Bethel on Thursday, June 9, and about 60 more followed on Friday.

The Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation and regional airline Yute Commuter Service are coordinating the flights.

People have who chosen to leave are mostly elders, people with medical issues, and mothers with young children. They are being housed in Bethel at the National Guard Armory and Gladys Jung Elementary School. YKHC is testing everyone who arrives for COVID-19. Some people are choosing to stay with family or friends in Bethel or travel on to Anchorage.

Meanwhile, federal officials are deploying more resources to the area to try to prevent the fire from reaching the villages. But another fire has ignited nearby, and to complicate efforts, the community water tank in St. Mary’s is leaking.

BLM has sent about a dozen more firefighters to the area since Thursday, increasing its crew to 66, and air tankers are dropping fire retardant around St. Mary’s. BLM Public Information Officer Beth Ipsen said that the retardant will wet the vegetation and help prevent the fire from moving past it to the community.

Even more firefighters are scheduled to arrive. Andrew Flagg of Yute Commuter Service said the airline was sending six planes to fly firefighters in from McGrath to St. Mary’s. Altogether, those planes can carry 30 passengers.

Ipsen said that hot weather, dry grass, constant wind and little rain have thwarted fire crews’ attempts to contain the fire so far.

“This is what we call a wind- and fuel-driven fire, meaning that the wind is pushing it through, and the vegetation is very receptive to burning. It’s also resistant to control,” Ipsen said.

Some firefighters are traveling along the river by boat, working to protect Native allotments and fish camps.

A larger team accustomed to coordinating more complicated responses is set to take over Saturday. Temperatures this weekend are expected to remain warm and dry.

Meanwhile, lightning started another fire nearby. This one is burning 33 miles north of Mountain Village and has grown to at least 60 acres. Four smokejumpers have been deployed to the fire, and helicopters are dropping water on the area. 

Ipsen said that surrounding wetlands could help contain its spread.

In St. Mary’s, the water level has been dropping in the community’s water tank for days. St. Mary’s School District Superintendent Dee Dee Ivanoff says that it fell 12 inches on June 9, and workers have been unable to locate the leak.

Ivanoff is working with volunteers to raise money through a GoFundMe campaign to buy pallets of bottled water.

“So in case we have to use up all our water, we will at least have potable water,” Ivanoff said.

YKHC is also sending bottled water, and state Emergency Operations Center spokesperson Jeremy Zidek said that the state does not anticipate that St. Mary’s will experience a drinking water shortage.

Meanwhile, on the ground in St. Mary’s, Ivanoff has been coordinating rides to the airport for people who want to leave. Her parents already flew to Bethel.

“It’s a relief to get people out, including those who are elderly and high risk,” she said.

She drove people in her truck while her employees drove others in the school bus and van. She called the scene “surreal.”

Ivanoff said that so much smoke blew into the community recently that it set off a school smoke alarm. She says her sister is loading a boat in case her family needs to leave, but Ivanoff intends to stay to watch the school.

A large tundra fire is threatening the village of St. Mary’s. The fire has been burning since the tundra was struck by lightning on May 31, and it is now within 12 miles of the community. Federal entities sent in more firefighters on June 7, and some residents are thinking about preparing their go-bags.

Elder George Beans, Sr. lives on a hill in midtown St. Mary’s. He’s been smelling smoke ever since the fire began on May 31.

“It was a little uncomfortable and hard to breathe,” Beans said.

On June 7, the wind switched and gave the village a short reprieve from the smoke. But Beans can still see it, and it’s getting worse.

“There’s a lot of smoke. It’s thick over up north of us. Real thick, and it seems to be getting closer, too,” Beans said.

The fire is getting both closer and larger. What the Bureau of Land Management first reported as an 1,800 acre fire around 25 miles from the village on June 3 had grown by June 7. The fire is now estimated at 30,000 acres and is just 12 miles from the village.

“It’s been hot, it’s been dry, and it’s been windy. And those winds gusts of 20 miles per hour, it’s kind of funneled through the Andreafsky River drainage,” said Beth Ipsen, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management’s fire service.

Ipsen said that the conditions and the proximity of the fire to the village prompted officials to send in more smokejumpers and the BLM’s Chena Hotshot firefighters on June 7. Eight smokejumpers had been there since June 3. Now there are over 40 fire fighters in St. Mary’s.

The firefighters are setting up camps in town and will hike up to the site of the fire each day. The weather forecast looks hot and dry for the next few days, but Ipsen said that she hopes that changes.

“We’re trying to stall this fire. The weather is not cooperating. We’re hoping that some of the forecasted cooler temperatures pan out this weekend. And we’re hoping that Mother Nature will help us out with this,” Ipsen said.

Ipsen said that she’s not worried yet, but Beans said that he is concerned. Beans has been living in St. Mary’s for most of his life, and said that this is the biggest and most dangerous fire he had ever seen.

He said that June 7 was the first day he considered stocking an emergency bag with essentials that he can quickly take with him if he needs to leave the village in a rush.

“I instructed my family, ‘We need to get something ready here just so we can grab and go,’” Beans said.

He said that he lives just a short distance from the boat harbor, and that he plans to take his family to another village on the Yukon by boat if the fire reaches St. Mary’s.

When a fire ripped through Tununak’s laundromat in February, it left people without an easy place to wash clothes. The fire also damaged the community’s internet infrastructure, causing outages for half of the village.

Without internet, residents say it’s been hard to carry out everyday tasks like uploading documents or ordering necessities online. And it’s making it harder for people to do their jobs.

“I don’t have internet access or email access,” said Alvina Whitman, who started a new job in March as an Indian Child Welfare worker. “I feel like I’m missing out on a lot.”

Whitman said that she has missed important meetings and trainings for her new job. And it’s impacted the children she is working to protect.

She’s missed out on Office of Children’s Services hearings, where decisions are made about whether a child should be removed from the care of their guardians. She said that because of the outages, she can only find out about the hearings through the mail.

Whitman has not only lost internet in her office, she’s lost it in her home, too. She can access the internet through her phone’s data plan, but she said that service is spotty and slow. She said that makes it more difficult for her to order necessities online.

“Sometimes I forget to order or end up not ordering because the internet’s so slow,” said Whitman.

Once, she wasn’t able to order diapers for her baby. She ran out and ended up having to buy a pack from Bethel, which was around $60 more expensive than online.

According to GCI, The internet outage has impacted five businesses and 12 homes in Tununak. But Tununak’s tribal administrator, Xavier Post, said that it has actually affected around 45 homes. That’s more than half of the community.

The internet is also out in the tribal administrator’s office. It’s making his job a lot harder. He spends a lot of time using the internet to file financial reports and apply for grants, but he said that the Tribe has possibly missed grant deadlines.

“We’re delaying our reports. It’s very frustrating. The internet we have right now, is takes up most of our day,” said Post.

Each task takes him double or triple the usual amount of time. He gets around not having internet at work by texting photos of the Tribe’s financial documents to a consultant in Fairbanks, or by lugging his work computers home and using his personal internet.

GCI spokesperson Heather Handyside said that she gets where Post is coming from.

“I definitely can understand why folks are frustrated. I know that connectivity is, you know, a need. It’s not a nice to have, it’s a must have,” she said.

She says that the company is working to restore the internet, and workers could be in Tununak by the end of the week. But Post said that GCI has been telling them they’ll get there by the end of the week since February.

Handyside said that the company had been waiting for a cable to arrive for months. Now they’re waiting on specialized technicians to install it. She said that both slowdowns are caused by general supply chain issues and an increased demand for broadband.

“Unfortunately, a big piece of this which is, you know, key equipment that we needed — it was just out of our hands,” Handyside said.

Handyside said that the residents without internet have not been charged during this time period. She said that if there are residents without internet who have been charged, they should get in touch with GCI.

In addition to waiting on internet, Tununak is also still waiting on a temporary washeteria from the State of Alaska. Internet outages have made communications with the state slow. Tribal Administrator Xavier Post said that’s delayed the process of getting the washeteria, but he still hopes they’ll have it at some point this summer.