Posted by CJ in AK on Thursday, July 01, 2004 at 8:17PM :
Wind-driven wildland fires continued to thrive across the central and eastern Interior of Alaska, forcing evacuations and threatening structures across an area larger than some states.
By 7 p.m. Wednesday, hundreds of residents north of Fairbanks had been ordered to evacuate their homes along the Steese Highway and the Alaska Division of Forestry was working on what one emergency official referred to as an "aggressive attack plan" to keep the Boundary Fire from engulfing a rural subdivision.
"The situation has been changing faster than anyone can keep up with," fire information officer Brett Ricker told The Associated Press. "We've got extreme winds and it's incredibly dry. We've got pretty much every factor that adds up to a big fire playing here."
The Boundary Fire, which doubled in size overnight Wednesday to more than 117,000 acres, moved so fast that borough officials revised a noon Thursday evacuation deadline for several areas along the Steese and Elliott highways to 7 p.m. Wednesday.
So far this year, fires have burned nearly 1 million acres with no end in sight.
Required Dodge Content: These here fires are only about 30 miles from my Dodges. I could rebuild my house but it would be tough to replace the Carryall...ya know what I mean.
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