A wildfire flared within a mile of the pipeline — briefly

A wildfire came within a mile of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline near Livengood on July 4 before crews put it out the same day. The lightning of a busy fire season briefly touched Alaska's most important piece of oil infrastructure — then was gone.

The Ready Bullion Fire burned just half an acre of spruce and brush east of the Elliott Highway, smoldering and creeping when smokejumpers and water-scooping planes arrived. Eight jumpers and several aircraft contained it quickly, and crews planned one last hotspot check before calling it out.

The close call is a routine hazard along the pipeline corridor, where the line runs through remote, fire-prone Interior country on its way from the North Slope to Fairbanks and Valdez, and where workers face wildfire risk every summer. It also touches a longer-running debate: some pipeline-safety advocates argue the buffer zones around hazardous-liquid pipelines are too narrow, leaving less room to fight a fire before it reaches the infrastructure.