The Swan Lake Fire, ignited by lightning on June 5, is being managed but not fully suppressed on the Kenai Peninsula 28 air miles south of Anchorage, Alaska. On August 17 it spread south across the Sterling Highway and has now grown to over 162,000 acres.
The Sterling Highway, Alaska Route 1, is a major thoroughfare that goes south from Anchorage down the Kenai Peninsula to Sterling, Soldotna, and Homer. During the night of August 25 some motorists on the highway found themselves driving past a crowning timber fire that was approaching the highway with what looked like 50 to 75-foot flames that were in some cases very close to the road. Some drivers said traffic alternated between slow rubber-necking and then rapid acceleration where flames were near, adding another variable to the smoke and dodging construction barriers.
Warning — the video below has strong language.
?? Swan Lake ? ?sorry for the F bombs buuut we were ?!! the Peninsula is still burning!! DRIVE SAFELY!!! from r/alaska
After travelers reported on social media some of their experiences driving past the flames, the Incident Commander of the Swan Lake Fire produced a video to shed some light on the incident. He explained the conditions on the highway were “constantly monitored” for fire and smoke hazards. He said at one point they closed the highway but before they could completely sweep that section some travelers were still in the area with active fire.
I have decided repeatedly that it’s too dangerous to drive that road right now. They are right. The people who are making that decision need to live with it. You can fly in if you must. Otherwise don’t drive it if you don’t like the risk.
Yeah the fire was huge and people probably shouldn’t have been there, but firefighters are doing as much as they can on a huge fire perimeter. People are angry or frustrated that they have to wait, then their angry or frustrated that the flames could have been impinging on their vehicles. The Fire team has been extremely informative and the communication has been good. They advised people to not drive through unless absolutely necessary. If you thought it was absolutely necessary then you took risk on your own accord. Take some personal responsibility instead of blaming your poor decision on someone else. Its always someone else’s fault. Relying on someone else or some agency for your well being for your personal safety or for your outcome in life is whats fundamentally wrong with our society. If you were by yourself maybe you should tell yourself well I made a dumb decision and if you had others in your car maybe YOU should apologize to them for your mistake. Personal responsibility, read about it in a book or something.
Had incident personnel driven off the road due to smoke and the vehicle was disabled, that in it’s self is a reportable accident.
That a second party was required to remove the stranded individuals from the fire scene due to smoke and fire behavior is a “near miss”.
A responsible team would investigate and learn from the situation.
As TM mentions above … mistakes are made, things happen.
You acknowledge those, hopefully learn from them and try to do better.
Not this team, in pure CYA mode, they trot out the IC in a slick video, using almost every “safety” cliche available.
If this had occurred to personnel on the incident it would have been considered a “near miss” and an investigation would have commenced.
I have to agree that the team is CYA mode, but mainly for a PR stance. From watching the video, I do not believe it would have been a “near miss” for fire personnel. The public does not deal with fires as regularly as the firefighters do and will generally be more afraid (and rightly so). In my years of experience, I have witnessed some crazy behavior based on the perceived threat that the public has. I was not present on that fire, but I do know that shutting down a major road like that is not the best thing to do, you can monitor the situation and do temporary closures when needed.
The best move would have been for the team to say “We screwed up and made a mistake, it won’t happen again”. There’s absolutely no way to justify the public driving through an area with that kind of fire behavior right next to the road…even in Alaska (yeah, I know they do things a bit differently in AK, but not that differently!). Glad no one got hurt, the potential looked huge.
The wind and how dry everything is makes conditions to unpredictable to make any promises of safe passage. Thats not on Forestry or the State. It is a simple fact. The Sterling Highway (aka AK Route 1) is not just a road, it is THE road to the peninsula where thousands of us live. Just going around isnt an option.