Video Clips
Quoted moments from Alaska public meetings, hearings, and press conferences.
James Nelson
“The biggest fire danger that we have is the West Feeder, so pretty much from our power plant all the way to Dot Lake. We killed this morning as preventative as the wind came up.”Alaska DNR Forestry: Tuesday August 18th, Tok Community Meeting Q&A · Aug 21, 2026
James Nelson
“We're going to have the power back up on the west feeder to as many people as possible probably here in the next half an hour to 45 minutes. That will stay on as long as the wind keeps down. If the wind comes back up, we got to cut it off again, and we might be cutting off other parts of town as too, as wind comes up or things start spring up.”Alaska DNR Forestry: Tuesday August 18th, Tok Community Meeting Q&A · Aug 21, 2026
James Nelson
“There's not a lot we can do yet until the fire is out of town and out of our power grid. Then we can start to go in, um, linemen at night when the fire is coming down. We're going out, we're doing assessments, we're making lists. We have material already on the way from Anchorage for transformers, main lines, secondaries.”Alaska DNR Forestry: Tuesday August 18th, Tok Community Meeting Q&A · Aug 21, 2026
James Nelson
“We can have more hands here by early next week, but there's not going to be a lot of power going on to the north side of town until all this calms down and the wind calms down.”Alaska DNR Forestry: Tuesday August 18th, Tok Community Meeting Q&A · Aug 21, 2026
James Nelson
“90% Of the time no one gives us that because everybody likes their trees and they like their, you know, their privacy.”Alaska DNR Forestry: Tuesday August 18th, Tok Community Meeting Q&A · Aug 21, 2026
James Nelson
“We're trying to just start not any new fires is our biggest thing right now. So as the wind comes up, more power is going to go off. As the wind goes down, more power is going to come on.”Alaska DNR Forestry: Tuesday August 18th, Tok Community Meeting Q&A · Aug 21, 2026
James Nelson
“This year is another weird year, like I said, with the pine cones. It just kind of hit us out of nowhere about 2-3 weeks ago. We just started noticing all the trees started leaning over, and then as soon as we got wind, it was over with.”Alaska DNR Forestry: Tuesday August 18th, Tok Community Meeting Q&A · Aug 21, 2026
Emily Yorkstorf
“We don't have a system in this town that tells the people there's an emergency. And if that was there, everybody would have been evacuated very much easier, and there would have been a lot more less houses burned down.”Alaska DNR Forestry: Tuesday August 18th, Tok Community Meeting Q&A · Aug 21, 2026
James Nelson
“The trees have a lot of pine cones on the top of them that got really heavy in the past 2 weeks, and that's mostly what's leaning over. It's actually ripping these trees out of the ground. It's ripping the roots right out of them. So we killed the power line this morning going out there.”Alaska DNR Forestry: Tuesday August 18th, Tok Community Meeting Q&A · Aug 21, 2026
James Nelson
“So even when the power does get restored, a lot of the stuff on the north side, we're keeping sectioned off because there's downed power lines. We've had dozers go through the power lines, they're on the ground and stuff like that. I have 6 inbound linemen coming up right now from Southeast Alaska. They're coming up from Skagway, they're coming up from Haines, they're coming up from Prince of Wales. We have Golden Valley Electric, um, who's on standby also to come.”Alaska DNR Forestry: Tuesday August 18th, Tok Community Meeting Q&A · Aug 21, 2026
James Nelson
“We actually don't even do right-of-way clearing in the summer because it's too much of a fire risk. So the equipment running through there and mulching stuff up, they hit rocks, they hit sparks, off goes the fire. So we try to do this stuff in the fall and spring as much as possible.”Alaska DNR Forestry: Tuesday August 18th, Tok Community Meeting Q&A · Aug 21, 2026