Anchorage Daily News

FAIRBANKS -- A large plume of smoke west of Fairbanks got the attention of some city residents this week who called the state Division of Forestry.

The agency said the smoke was from a prescribed burn on Cache Creek Road near the base of Murphy Dome. The burn is part of an effort by state forestry officials to burn as many as 1,500 acres worth of black spruce that was cut last year to create fire breaks near residential areas on the outskirts of Fairbanks.

The $1.7 million cooperative effort between the Fairbanks North Star Borough and state Division of Forestry is called the Community Wildfire Protection Plan. It identifies populated areas within the borough that are at highest risk for wildfire.

The borough received two federal fuel mitigation earmarks, $986,000 in 2005 and $788,000 in 2006, to help fireproof Fairbanks following the record-setting wildfire season of 2004, in which more than 6 million acres burned.

"Part of the fuel treatment was to burn all the downed fuels to get rid of fire risk," Robert Schmoll, fire management officer for state forestry in Fairbanks, said. "When you burn the piles, it burns down and gets rid of a lot of that tundra mat and provides a good mineral seed bed for hardwood regeneration."

Firefighters began burning 40 acres worth of debris piles in Cache Creek, off Murphy Dome Road, earlier this week. Schmoll is hoping to ignite another 200 acres that were cut in the form of a 300-foot wide fire break on the north side of Murphy Dome Road next week.

The state also is hoping to burn about 200 acres on Old Ridge Trail, off the Old Nenana Highway, as well as more than 1,200 acres in the Little Chena River drainage, five to eight miles north of Chena Hot Springs Road. Schmoll said firefighters will be lucky to get to that area this year.

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