A fire no one is fighting has been fouling Fairbanks' air for weeks

Most people breathing the smoke from the Tatlanika Fire will never see the fire. It's burning about 40 miles southwest of Fairbanks, out where there are no homes to threaten — and the state has decided, on purpose, to let it burn.

Since it was spotted June 20, the Tatlanika Fire has grown to an estimated 982 acres, and Forestry personnel are watching it by reconnaissance flight rather than fighting it on the ground. The fire sits in what managers call a "limited response" area, a designation that reflects a hard reality of firefighting in a state this size: Alaska can't chase down every fire across country larger than Texas, so it triages, throwing crews at fires that endanger people and property and monitoring the rest from the air.

Researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks note that a wildfire can sit far from any town and still take a real toll on people's health — and that smoky summer days in Fairbanks are becoming more common. Rain forecast across the Interior could ease the haze, at least for now.