The Sitka Fire Department tamped out a woodland fire late last week.
On Friday (8-7-26), around 10:30 a.m., a 911 caller reported smoke coming from a tree near the Indian River trailhead.
Interim Fire Chief Brian McLaughlin said one engine and five firefighters responded to the scene, where they found a fire brewing under the exposed root system of a Sitka spruce. He said responders didn’t find anything obvious that started the fire.
“But what our guess is, just due to the nature of the fire and where it was located, and it was really kind of in the the peat moss of the ground, that probably something like a cigarette butt or a firework that had gone off several days prior, or even a day prior, had started a small burn that just kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter until it started smoldering and creating enough of a smolder to smoke up before it actually caught the tree itself on fire,” he said.
McLaughlin said the crew pushed water directly into the ground for about an hour, saturating the area to avoid any reignition. The overall response took less than two hours.
He said living in a rainforest won’t necessarily prevent fires from happening, and Sitkans should be cautious, especially with the recent sunny, dry weather.
“It doesn’t take that long for our rainforest flora to dry out enough to be a little bit more easily combustible,” he said. “It just takes the right conditions and the right baseline fuel, air, and heat to make it happen.”
Quick action also prevented a fire at a DeGroff Street home on Sunday from spiraling out of control.
McLaughlin said it appears a homemade wooden smoker was the source of the blaze. It caught the side of a lean-to garage and porch on fire.
“It just so happens one of our off-duty firefighters was walking by, saw the smoke, [and] called it into us right then, and helped the tenant start putting water on the fire with the tenant’s garden hose,” he said. “And we were there shortly thereafter with a couple fire trucks.”
10 firefighters, two engines, and an ambulance arrived on scene around 1:45 p.m. and put out the fire quickly. McLaughlin said there was some damage to the structure, but nothing “catastrophic.” The total response and investigation took about an hour and a half.
McLaughlin reminds Sitkans to not hesitate to call 911.
“If you think you need us, just give us a call,” he said.
