Fire in the West - Western Forestry Leadership Coalition

State statutes provide that cities and boroughs may provide structural fire protection within
their jurisdiction or within specifically formed service areas. Even though the Division’s area of
responsibility overlaps with local jurisdictional areas, the protection services provided by both
governmental entities do not normally conflict with each other except when a wildland fire (the
State’s responsibility) threatens a structure (the local jurisdiction’s responsibility).
To enhance the wildland fire protection within the Division’s direct protection area, they
have entered into cooperative fire protection agreements with 56 city and borough fire agencies.
The main purpose of these agreements is to provide assistance to the Division when a fire
occurs in the area or to provide protection during the “non-fire season” periods when the Division
does not staff it’s fire equipment. There are 288 organized fire departments in the State.
Fire Activity
Alaska averages just over 300 wildland fires and burns just under 227,000 acres a year.
The annual acreage burned varies significantly from 16,585 acres in 1995 to over a million
acres in 1997. Debris burning is the single most frequent cause at 33 percent, with miscellaneous
as the second highest causal rate at 24 percent. An average of 91 percent of fires were
contained at under 10 acres with an average fire size of 0.51 acres. The average size of fires
over 10 acres was 7,058 acres. Alaska is unique in it’s size in that it constitutes over 25 percent
of the total acres in all of the 17 Western States.
During Fire Season 2002, Alaska had 399 fires that burned 802,515 acres, well above the
10-year average for both numbers and acres.
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