Alaska DNR Forestry: Mukluk Fire Community Meeting - 20260823

Thank you so much for allowing us into your community. I am from Kenny Lake, so I have played many a volleyball game in this gym, slept on classroom floors in here many times, felt the immense generosity of the people of Tok many times, and felt it again to be here. So also want to thank all of the volunteers that have come and showed up, all of the cooperators all of the firefighters that have come together, um, in a very sad time, but you have really shown up and it's been really, really incredible to watch. So today we are going to go through and talk about the condition of the fire. We have a wonderful lineup here.

We've got Mike Ottenweller, who is our incident meteorologist, Larry Weddle, who is our fire behavior analyst, Abe Davis, our Operation Chief. Jeremy Zettig, who is with the State Emergency Operations Center. Sarah Sarlos from the Division of Forestry and Fire Protection will be going over your Community Wildfire Protection Plan that is ongoing right now. Rob Allen with the Division of Forestry and Fire Protection. Adam Kolai, our Incident Commander.

And with that, um, we will slowly get started. We also have a lot of resources over on these tables over here. We've got fire information resources as well as disaster assistance resources, so please make use of those. We also have water in the corner over there, so please take advantage of that as well. We've got 3, 3 or 4 cases, so should be plenty.

Um, and thank you so much for coming again. We really appreciate it and for welcoming, welcoming us into your community. So with that, we will get started with our resident meteorologist.

Hey, good evening everybody. As Jesse said, I'm Mike Ottenweller. I'm the incident meteorologist here with the team. So what that means is that I forecast the weather and give them as much of a heads up on any incoming weather systems, as we had today, as I possibly can. I'm out of the Anchorage office for the National Weather Service, and I come up here just about every year.

I have a cabin up in Chicken with a couple buddies.. And so this, uh, when this fire started, uh, and as soon as the team needed an incident meteorologist, I was on my way. So I'm happy to be here with you all and looking forward to answering any questions that you have through the evening. As I said, my role is to give a forecast for the firefighters and anybody else who's helping out in the fire environment. And so kind of recapping where we were before this fire started, as I think you all know, you were in a pretty significant drought We had not had rain of a magnitude above a tenth of an inch.

That's kind of that number that we use in firefighting is what helps to really slow the fire down or let the fire continue to grow. So a tenth of an inch, the last time you guys had that was July 9th, and then today's rain, the last time we saw this much rain was all the way back near the solstice on June 23rd. So that puts you guys in a pretty significant deficit, obviously. Leading to the drought conditions. As of today though, obviously this morning was really good news.

We got just over half of an inch of rain. We saw that system coming from the east. We weren't exactly sure how much it would give us, and it was a very healthy amount of rain. Again, that tenth of an inch is what we use, so 5 times that number is certainly good for the firefighters and firefighting purposes.

As we look out, this is one of the tools that we use for the firefighting and briefing and making our plans. So this is what we call the weather matrix. The easiest way to think about it is green is good and red is bad. And so the good news is for this graphic, you see a lot of green and you see no red in any of the columns. So that's good news.

Kind of walking forward from today's rain event, what we expect tomorrow is just kind of a warmer and drying out day. Nothing significant for tomorrow, really. Tuesday, another system will come in really from the Bering Coast all the way through the interior of Alaska, so passing through Fairbanks Delta and eventually to us. That should lead to some more rainfall on Tuesday night. It will also bring us a little bit of southerly winds through the gaps, through Tok Cut-Off, but the rain should, should help to mitigate any of those winds.

The rain will end Wednesday morning, and that's going to leave us in what we expect to be a pretty cool pattern for the rest of the week. Those high temperatures upper 50s, low 60s. That's pretty, uh, below normal, significantly below normal. We expect temperatures in the mid to upper 60s this time of year for you all, so that's getting below normal. And that's kind of the trend that we see going out even beyond this week.

Looks like a fall pattern kind of stays with us for the next couple weeks. I think we have a couple more slides here if you want to step forward. Oh yeah, so this is just our rainfall from this morning. Those are our two observations that we think are reliable. I would ignore this one here, the 0.04, but the 0.43 and 0.54 just showing the rainfall near the fire perimeter there in purple.

Next slide. And so looking out beyond where that matrix would take us, this is just an easy graphic in terms of temperature outlooks. All this is really saying is that the temperature is expected to be near normal for the next 8 to 14 days. So that time frame would be the very last day of August through the 6th of September. And the next one.

And again, as we move into a more fall-like September pattern, we do expect precipitation. This is the precipitation below and above normal. We expect that precipitation to be above normal for this area, more of a westerly influence. That's a fall pattern for this portion of Alaska. And so we should continue to see rainfall, or at least some showers every couple days, which again is good news for any fire concerns.

I think we have one more graphic here. Yeah, this is just showing kind of where the drought concerns were. This was made just about the time when the fire started, so we were at the peak of our drought conditions, and a little bit more towards the interior there's also drought conditions in there. So some areas of concern still around the state. Not everybody got the rain that we got today, so there are still some areas of concern, but that drought is obviously what led to this fire being able to start and grow as fast as it did.

Again, I'll be around later on if you have questions, but I'm going to hand it over to fire behavior with Larry so he can give you some more information.

Hello, I'm Larry Waddell, fire behavior analyst for the team. As you can see with the— can you flip back to the matrix real quick?

So on the matrix here, the big key factors on fire growth on these fires are going to be temperature and the RH. It has an influence on the surface dryness and fuels, and that's what allows the fire to grow. And as you can see, as these numbers start to taper off in terms of the temperatures and the RHs are coming up through as the week goes on, that we have a tendency to have less drying of those surface fuels. And as those— that less drying occurs, so it stays moist, that continues to reduce the ability of that fire, surface fire, to grow. Winds are the secondary factor, so how fast can that grow if it's able to burn.

Winds are still, um, still a little on the high side, but they're moderating as we're going through the week. So as far as its ability to grow, it's not that easy to grow because because it's more moist out there, and secondarily, it won't grow as fast because the wind speeds are a little bit slower. Go back to the drought.

So, and then one more. So here's an indicator, it's called a buildup index, just jargon that we use in fire. It's really a measure of the drought. It has kind of two purposes. One is what's the availability of the fuel to burn, and in this case it's a subsurface fuel.

That's a big component for how hot the fire will get. As you can see right here on this graph, this is a record, uh, highest that you've ever had in recorded history for this time frame. This is your average. The black line is this year.

At this point in time is when this fire started. As you can see, we were in extreme drought conditions. What was really available to burn, that subsurface fuels, was really available to burn at that time. However, as you can see as well, here is this rain event. This is the forecast for tomorrow.

So it's moving us way down in the column. So it's not back down to normal, but it's also well below those peak conditions that we had before. Um, as the days get shorter, as every day that we move on, it's about 6 minutes shorter a day. That's less sunlight, that's less surface heating, that's not allowing as much drying to occur. Even when we get raining events, it's harder for that surface fuel to become available to burn.

So my message here is that we are not going to get back into these conditions again this year, not with what we're seeing in the outlet. It's not what we're seeing in the forecast. We're going to be in a much more, um, say, less severe condition, but I guess I'll leave it at that, other than I'll just say that we're probably still going to have some short-term events. There's a possibility we still have the ability to dry out and fire move around a little bit, just not to this level. With that, I'll pass it on to Abe.

Good morning, folks, or evening, afternoon. Sorry, days are going by quick. Uh, Abe Davis, I'm the operations chief with the team. I guess, you know, I just want to start, and this team was earlier a few weeks ago down in Colorado, Aspen Acres Fire, a lot of devastation with that fire. Talking with some of the folks returning from that, I had a conversation with one of the firefighters and they just said, you know, I don't ever want to become numb to seeing, you know, people's homes and people's property and their lives destroyed, you know.

And then we find ourselves here in Tok and we're seeing, seeing some of that. And I just want you to know, you know, we feel it too. It's, uh, it's not something we like to see, so we're with you all. I'm going to go over the fire, the current conditions on the fire, and a little bit about what's going on out there and some of the winds we've had. So just today, this is the— you all are probably familiar with the black and the red on the map.

The red is uncontained fire's edge, the black is contained. As of this afternoon, happy to announce that you'll see some updated stats coming out here, but all the way around the south end of the fire, this is now black contained. We're feeling comfortable to call that part of the fire contained. So those will be updated on tomorrow's tomorrow's stats. We didn't get that to our planning unit in time today, so you'll see some updated numbers tomorrow.

Needless to say, the bulk of the work out here, the bulk of the energy, the focus has really been on the impacted residents in between Red Fox Road, the Alcan Highway, Sundog Trail, and to to, to, uh, First Street over in this area here. Um, when this fire started on the 17th, there was a surge of resources that came into Tok. Um, I showed up in Tok on the 18th. There was a continual pouring of resources coming in here. The team, uh, assumed command on Thursday.

We've had crews, uh, that were in the Lower 48 brought back, California crews just arrived last night. We've got a couple of hotshot crews that are up from California. All that, that workforce has been surging into here and trying to make sure we're addressing a lot of the issues that this fire caused. So with the drought conditions, you know, most folks probably know it burns the roots out in these shallow-rooted spruce trees. They fall down, they jack-straw on heat, and then, and then that reignites, and we have you know, little bonfires spread out throughout the woods, and that's all happening around structures that we're trying to continue to protect.

So it makes the, makes the, uh, the operations a lot more difficult. We're not just focused on holding the line to keep the fire from spreading into other areas. We're also trying to hold the line and go interior and keep the fire from spreading and impacting other structures that survive. So That's really been the story here, uh, this, this past week, and it's, it's been a, it's, it's been a workload. At the same time, uh, you know, this fire continued to spread to the north, and we could not address that.

So we've had pretty good success implementing dozers, uh, here on the east flank in the old 1990 Tok River Fire. They've been able to get this entire eastern flank all the way wrapped up around, and they've tied it into the Tanana River. We've not staffed that with very many firefighters just because the focus is down here to the south. That's been patrolled primarily with some smokejumpers. We did have a Type 2 crew out there for a few days stringing out hose and mopping up, but that's holding and looking really good.

It's continuing to be patrolled aggressively, and we're feeling good about that east flank. On the west side, similar story. We did push dozer all the way up here, and as you can see on the imagery there, there's a there's a fuel transition that happens, gets into a really marshy, boggy, wet area. There are stringers of spruce up there, as we would expect. Those stringers are holding heat, but in between, in kind of the marshy bogs, it's not carrying through there.

And we pushed dozers up until we didn't feel comfortable pushing them any further. There's that— that whole flank has been backed up by retardant. We had Midnight Sun Hotshot crew up in there for a shift It's had a bunch of smokejumpers up patrolling that line, and so by no means would we say it's good. That's why it's still red, not black. There's still heat along that line, but there's a dozer— there's a dozer containment line along that whole flank, and we feel pretty good about where that's at, certainly given the weather that came in last night.

Down here in, in, uh, what we keep referring to as the box, but Red Fox Drive South, um, so 8 crews in there, uh, just it's a ton of different responders that have come from across the state. So Anderson, uh, Matsuburo, uh, there's folks from Kenai, um, Fairbanks. I could go on and on, but there's just a lot of cooperators that have showed up all down in there doing good work. We've got some heavy equipment operating in there, and really the focus is secure the heat, make sure that we're not going to have to worry about this thing spreading anymore, secure around the structures that are, that are standing and make sure those are locked in and there's not a further threat, and then, and then structures that have, have that have been lost, make sure that we secure that area, we remove the hazards in the trees so that when it's time for you all to go back in there and make heads or tails of what you've got, you don't have to worry about a tree coming down and hitting you or a loved one. That's what we've tasked those folks with, and that's what they're working hard.

If people were out and about today, even in the rain this morning, those crews were running saws and getting after it, and I think I think that's a testament to how they feel about this community and wanting to get this work done for y'all. They know how important it is to get this area open back up with winter, you know, just around the corner. So, um, yeah, it's been, uh, it's, uh, it's, it's weird to be on a fire like this in August, um, but this is the, this is the way it turned out this So we're glad to be here and we're glad to help the community. We've got some great folks out there doing work and, uh, and we'll be here for a little while longer. It's going to take— it's going to certainly take a few more days to get that area safe to where we feel comfortable having folks back in there working around us, but they're making a hard push to get it to a good place.

And I think I'll end it there.

Hello, uh, my name is Jeremy Zedek. I'm a public information officer with the State of Alaska's Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. That's kind of a long name, but really what we do is we're the state's emergency management agency. This is our website, and it's ready.alaska.gov. There's a lot of information over there with that website on there, And if you've been impacted by the fire, please go to our website and register for our individual assistance.

Last week, Governor Dunleavy declared a disaster and he activated our state's disaster recovery programs, both public assistance and individual assistance. And what that means is public assistance is for critical infrastructure, bridges, public buildings, those types of things that have been destroyed, and also individual assistance. And that's probably much more important to many of you who had a significant loss. What that program does, it activates 3 different types of assistance that you can be eligible for. One is housing assistance, and this is for damage to your real property.

Your, your primary— it has to be your primary residence, and the max cap for that program is $22,400.

And I understand that that is not going to replace your home, but that, that's the state assistance that the state can provide for your home. We also have other needs assistance, and And this can be for your primary means of transportation. If you have any expenses that are related to the disaster, maybe there is a hotel bill that you have or some other expenses related— you had to replace critical items, medications, that— those types of things, those can be eligible expenses. If you have medical expenses that can that can be eligible as well under the other needs assessed assistance. The cap for that program is an additional $22,400.

Um, so the maximum that we can give you under those two is $44,800.

Then we have a temporary housing component, and that can provide homeowners with up to 18 months of housing, and renters 3 months of housing. What we do is take a look at the HUD fair market value for the area that you live in, and then depending on your family size, they'll give you housing that's appropriate to it. You may have, have had a 3,000 square foot home, and the program is not going to give you that, but We can give you some housing that's suitable for the size of your family. Um, I really would encourage everyone to go and apply for that individual assistance, even if you're not sure that you have damages that are eligible. Eligible.

Well, all that we can say is no, it is— there is a process that you have to go through, a lot of documents that we're going to ask you for. Thing like— things like proof of ownership, your identification, uh, deeds and titles to property, proof of ownership like a utility bill to show that you lived in the property. And, uh, we're going to want to see your insurance information if you have that. So we do require a lot of documentation. I would encourage you to keep that— all that documentation together and be ready to bring provide that because there may be some other types of assistance that come down the road and other people are going to ask for those documents as well.

Some of that assistance is on the federal side. There's the federal government— FEMA has an individual assistance program and a public assistance program as well, and it looks a lot like our our State of Alaska programs. One big nuance in there is the State of Alaska can pay for things like subsistence camps where, um, the federal programs cannot. So there's a little bit of things that we can pay for. We're going to request a joint preliminary damage assessment with FEMA and the federal government, and so we're going to have federal officials out here from FEMA and go and take a look at the damages that have occurred.

We're going to show them what was damaged. It will be a state-led event, and then they can go back and make determinations. We almost always request individual assistance on the federal level. Unfortunately, in the last 20 years, I think that's only been granted 7 times. Things like the 2018 Cook Inland Earthquake, Typhoon Merbah, Typhoon Halong are the 3 most recent ones.

Well, I guess we had, uh, the Juneau floods as well in 2014, but— or 2014 it was, it was granted, 2013 it was not. So the level of damage there has to be pretty significant. How FEMA determines that? I don't know. You know, they don't tell us that.

Uh, on the public assistance side, it's a little bit more clear, but on the individual assistance side, we don't know. But as the state emergency management agency, we're going to do everything we can to advocate for that case. I can't tell you that the federal government at this time, and FEMA, has not really been granting a lot of our requests or our appeals. Getting back to our individual assistance application, please, please apply even if you're not sure you have damages. That does a couple things.

One, it strengthens our case that there was damages that were outside of the program. When we go to apply for that for FEMA, we have, we have greater justification for that additional level of assistance. Two, we have applicant— we have partner organizations like Team Rubicon and other charitable organizations that we can leverage to get in and provide for unmet needs. But if we don't know what those needs are, then we can't advocate for you with those other groups. There's a lot of groups around the state that are to come in and help.

As you've seen, there's been a tremendous outpouring of support during the initial disaster phase, and your community has done a great job of managing that.

And what happens typically is, as time goes on, people are just not aware of the needs, and so, uh, you don't have that support. If you tell us, then we And then 3, really, once you've applied, all we can say is no. If we say no and you're looking at our paperwork or our website and it says, hey, this is talking about me, appeal that. Because we, we take a look at that, sometimes we look at it once, and then when we get that additional information, we can go out and, and make another evaluation. Get you some additional funding.

On the federal side, the federal individual assistance, the thresholds are twice what our state threshold— or the caps are twice what our state is. So for housing assistance, they can give $44,800.

For other needs assistance, another $44,800. But like I said, the federal individual assistance is by no means guaranteed. What's much easier to come by at the federal level is the Small Business Administration disaster loans. These are low-interest loans. The— whatever the prime rate is, it's usually like a half a percent or a percent above the prime rate that the Federal Reserve is lending money.

Don't hold me on, on what SBA is but it's around that, so it's a very inexpensive loan and you can use that to rebuild your home. If you've had a business that was damaged, that's really the primary way that businesses are able to utilize federal assistance. That SBA disaster home loan programs, those are much easier to come by, um, and the state will be requesting that after our preliminary damage assessment. And with that, at the end I'll take questions and we'll be around. I'm also here with my colleagues John Ramsey over there.

John, can you raise your hand? And Chris Lee. And they're going to be at our Disaster Assistance Center tomorrow where you can apply, apply in person. Uh, we'll be there from 10:45 5 to 5 tomorrow, 10 o'clock to 5 on Tuesday, and 10 to 4 on Wednesday. I, I— you can come in, ask us questions in person, applying in person, but you can also go to our website, click on the link, uh, August Topfires, and that will take you to our application page.

Um, you can apply at home and also come into the Disaster Assistance Center to provide documents documents if you've already done it. Again, you can come in and ask us questions or provide documents to us. The, the more documentation we have up front, the faster we can make a determination. One of our biggest priorities here are for people that are— do not have housing, to provide them with that temporary housing. And so in many cases, we're going to try to focus on those cases first so we can get people into some type of temporary housing that they can be in for long term or temporary term, but 18 months for homeowners, 3 years for renters, as that's our priority.

And then we start looking at those— the housing assistance and other needs assistance and provide the payments for that. One last thing, if the federal government did, uh, declare for IA, our state programs become secondary because it's very clear that we can't duplicate benefits. And so you'll have to restart that, that federal individual assistance process and go through that again, uh, if, if that was to occur. But like I said, we— there's no guarantee of that federal individual assistance. I just want to lay all that out for you guys so you have a clear understanding.

And again, if you have questions, we'll be here for the next 3 days, uh, and we'll have other folks coming in later to help with other parts of the recovery. Thank you. Okay, good afternoon. My name is Sarah Sarlos. I'm the Fire Staff Officer for Division of Forest and Fire Protection.

I'm going to divert from fire information just for a minute or two because I need your help. For the last year, we've been in the development of the Tok Area Community Wildfire Protection Plan, and we've We had one or two community meetings with kind of a light turnout. Um, this QR code will get you to a survey to be able to get some information from you. So why do we need a CWPP? So it's not going to prevent wildfires from happening, but in that plan it will have mitigations, like maybe some more fuel breaks, some prevention strategies.

Just, it's—. They're really robust, and it also helps the state be able to apply for federal funding as well. So our goal is to get this plan developed and completed by December, so within 2026. So again, I don't want to take up too much time talking about the CWPP, but there's this QR code and then there's going to be information over here on the tables. And then Emily, who is— she works for me, she's the statewide CWPP coordinator, she's the one with a big smile and really long braids.

She's been around the community, um, you'll see more of her, and, uh, we, we need to have the community as part of that plan. So, um, thanks for your time, and I'll pass it on to Rob. Good evening, everybody. I'm Rob Allen. I'm the Northern Region Fire Management Officer, so everything from Fairbanks, Delta, and Tok is in my responsibility area.

Uh, just to start off with, just a huge shout out to the folks in our department that are over across the at Tok Forestry with an incredible response. Folks from Delta, Fairbanks, Copper River all flooded in when we needed it. The Tok Volunteer Fire Department was key in making this go on and still is with giving us, uh, almost a million gallons of water so far to be put on this as we move it forward. So, um, huge effort going forward in there to pull things together and get this going into this process here. I want to thank the team for showing up as quickly as they did.

We were here working on this right off the bat. My rough count right now that as I've gone through, we're fine-tuning it, but there's about 100+ homes in the affected area. The affected area that we're referring to is that area from the highway up to Red Fox is 860 acres. So that takes us a little bit of time to be able to get through that and make that to the point where it's safe enough for us to get people back in. The other part of the group that we're working with right now to make that happen is APT.

They're in lockstep with us the whole time. Just as soon as we get an area that's clear enough from fire danger and trees falling, we can get them in. We're getting them in to start working on that. And that's part of that package that we'll have as we get ready to start talking about— you'll hear us talking about reentry and when we can start getting people back into their homes and start looking at it. We're well aware that we're running against the time clock here, that winter's coming.

We're all from Alaska. We all know if we don't get stuff done now, freezes up, it's springtime before we get any work done. So we're really trying to keep a push both on the team and our utilities and working with, um, State Emergency Management to get the answers in here to get things taken care of before winter does set in. So know that that is one of our priorities that we're pushing forward also. And then we'll have a chance to talk a little bit more afterwards, but mostly I just wanted to thank the folks that have— the folks in this community that have stepped out I was out the second day with the team, up with the group working on the fire, and although it was an evacuation area and you're all supposed to be out for your safety, I appreciate the sandwiches and the rest of the water and the things that we got as we were out there cruising around.

The meals that have been provided by the folks in this community has just been top-notch. I've been here for many, many years. We've fought a lot of fire in the Tok area, and it's the community that always helps us out the most. Since we're doing this. I'll leave it there and turn it over to the IC.

All right, thanks, Rafa. Thanks, everybody. Good evening, everybody. My name is Adam Kohler. I'm the deputy IC with Alaska Team 1 here.

I'm down from Fairbanks with the team. We've got about 50 folks on our incident management team with us. That doesn't include the firefighters. We bring the logistics support, the financial support, the planning support. Safety and risk management is a big part of the job.

And of course, Sam with his information staff to keep the information flowing to y'all in the crowd here in Tok. Unfortunate circumstances here. And I can tell you firsthand, talking to the team members, which are comprised of mainly Alaskans out of the 50 folks on our team, mostly Alaskans with the exception of a couple. Everyone on the team has been out to Tok over the years. On fires myself over the last two decades.

I've been out here several times and I got to say, this one hits really hard. I can assure you that the team, as Rob just said, is doing our best to expedite the work out there. All I ask of you is just give us a little bit more time with the overhead hazards. Those are the snags, the dead standing trees, not dead yet, but they're burned. Those really do pose a threat.

And when incidents happen with snags, with trees coming down, Generally speaking, it is a significant impact to any individual that may hit. So that's the number one risk out there. Luckily, the rain has come in, so that risk and that hazard has shifted from the fire environment to these standing trees. Also, as has been mentioned, there's a lot of hazmat out there, unfortunately, with the burned structures. That will continue to be out there for a bit as we get in to make these work areas safe.

So So I just ask for your patience. We're doing everything we can to expedite the work out there. And last, understand, um, they're, uh, on the fire team and with our staff here, we've got about 350 people as of tonight here. That's 50 with the team, about 300 actual firefighters out there. We did bring 2 crews in from California yesterday.

They arrived the same time the rain did. Which was a welcome aid to our forces out there. But with 350 folks here in a community of between 1,200 and 1,300, we ourselves being here provides some impacts. My message to the team is always relationships and communications. We're guests here, we're here to help, but we also understand we bring impacts of our own.

So I'd encourage you all, please, if there's anything not going right out there, any— anybody driving too fast, school's starting tomorrow. We're messaging that out to our folks. We're making our folks aware of that, but we have responders in the community, uh, and we understand that, uh, y'all are going through a lot of stress from the fire and we don't want to bring any more from the team. Please reach out to Sam and his staff from information or any of us on the team if there's anything going on out there that doesn't seem desirable or is disruptive to you. Again, I'm happy to be here, but at the same time, um, Very sorry for the circumstances.

So appreciate it.

Yes, evacuations. Thanks, Sam, for prompting me on that. I was mentioned at the beginning with the evacuation status downgrade with last night's rain and also the work that's been done out there. We did go ahead and remove the evacuation zones that were in ready and set. I believe there was 5 of them around the Midnight Sun zone.

That Midnight Sun zone is going to remain in go, and the reason it's remaining in go is just what I spoke to. Although the fire activity has subsided, those hazard trees out there are posing enough of a threat that we are going to remain in go. As far as how long we'll be in go, I'm going to say generously give us a week with the operations out there and the two crews from California that showed up yesterday. I know Abe and his operations folks are looking at the pace of work and the production they're getting done out there. And I have a feeling, a hopeful feeling, that that may actually go down a couple of days.

But I don't want to make any promises right now. So I'm going to say by next weekend we're going to have— I don't want to say a hazard-free environment because there's going to be lots of hazards remaining out there for some time with the debris. But as far as the firefighting hazards, which include those burned trees, Give us about a week and we're going to hope to reduce that by a couple days as well. Sam, anything else? Good job.

All right, thanks, Jesse.

Thank you. Okay, so we're going to move into questions here. There's a few people I'd like to point out in the room that didn't speak but that are here and available to answer questions. Um, we have James Nelson with AP&T, Alaska Power and Telephone, over here available for questions. We also have Babian Kern with Bureau of Indian Affairs available, and then Jess— Jessie Braga, who you're all familiar with from the Mushers Association.

She can answer any questions as well. So to start, we're going to do kind of group question and answer with the microphone so we can capture that. This will be recorded and posted on the Division of Forestry and Fire Protection's YouTube and Facebook after this, but if we could keep it somewhat short and sweet because after that is over we will all remain here and we will spread out amongst the many mats around the room and we can do more in-depth one-on-one question and answers. So we want to start, any questions for the group?

Comment. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Jesse had one comment.

Um, just wanted to remind folks— I'm sure everybody's already seen posts about it on Facebook— but wanted to remind folks that, uh, the kitchen at Dog Mushers will be closing tomorrow morning after breakfast. Um, and then also all distributions of stuff has been centrally located at the hockey rink. There is more than enough for everybody in this room to outfit themselves for the next 10 years with both amazingly wonderful Value Village type outfits and, uh, where all the non-perishables that were being stored over at Mushers Hall have been moved to the central distribution location at the hockey rink. I'm working with Sarah to get the donations that were brought over to the mini storage also moved over. That'll probably take a little bit because she's going to do up some special packages for specific folks over there before consolidating into the general distribution amount.

But if you haven't stopped by the hockey rink, I strongly recommend you do so. You'd be pretty amazed at the amazing outpouring of generosity and wealth that this town has been surrounded with.

Awesome, thank you so much. Um, it's true, the resilience of Tok is always incredible to see, but it's been very evident this time around, the way you have stepped up to support each other has been absolutely incredible to watch. So if anybody does have questions, we have Terry here with a microphone so everybody can hear. I'm holding the microphone, so don't try to take it away.

I'm sorry if this is a repeat. I understand in some areas the power is going to be out for some time. I just wanted to hear a little bit more about how long and what areas do you think are going to be out the longest and affected the most. And then the next question would just—. I wanted to find out more about BIA and what they have going on and how they can help us.

I'm James Nelson with AP&T. I'm the power operations manager for the interior of Alaska, for anybody who doesn't know me yet. So yeah, good point. We are getting power restored as fast as we possibly can. There's going to be some areas in here that we still can't make into because of hazard trees, falling trees, ash pits, and all that other fun stuff.

But between us and forestry, we're literally on each other's coattails at this time. We have crew with them, they have a crew with us. As soon as it's deemed safe to get in, we're rebuilding line as fast as we can. We got lucky that the fire was so fast that it didn't take out a lot of our poles. There are some here and there where the fire would linger that the poles are impacted a little bit more than others, but for the most part, our structure is still intact.

So a lot of the stuff we're going to have to do is just taking down lines, putting new insulation slaters up, stringing up new line, and getting power where we can. Um, also just to mention, we do have— we're putting together kits for meter bases for the ones that got lost on houses or anything like that. So if people want temporary power, they can come to us. We don't know how many kits we're going to put together yet because we don't have all the materials. We're actually sending people up tomorrow to pick up more.

So if you did lose your house in the fire, uh, we're going to have kits for you guys, we'll provide the meter bases and stuff like that so we can get you guys temporary power before winter. So at least—. And it might just be an outlet, you know, on a post that's going to go up to the line, but there'll at least be electricity there for a start, and we'll kind of go from there. But, um, probably the biggest—. I don't know if you can zoom in on the map.

So over in this area here, a lot of the Sourdough line is completely gone. We have to rebuild that line completely. That's probably going to take the most time. It's going to be on Sourdough and Sanford. That was probably the most affected areas that we had power-wise.

Um, but basically, if it's inside the red, we're trying to get in there. The crew's been working going down, um, Stardust and Red Fox. We're getting ready to probably light that off here in the next day or two, and then we're or just get into areas that are still too hot. But we still have— I have 12 linemen here now, and that's primarily where we're going with it. So we're getting it up as fast as it gets cold on the ground.

So any other questions? Long as I'm up here? No?

Hello again, my name is Fabian Kern. I'm here with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. My main focus for being assigned to the fire was for the resource on the Native allotments kind of scattered in the, in the planning area for this fire. None had been impacted by, uh, by the footprint of this, uh, of the fire. But as you can see, there's, there's several, uh, all around there.

As for assistance that, uh, what the BIA can help provide, I will, uh, I will reach out to our regional director and upper management and, uh, and provide some information back to the team and to get that back to you.

Any other questions?

Oh, up here, Terry, the left.

I just had a question, I think, for for Forestry. I saw somewhere that they did have unmanned drones taking thermal pictures. I was just wondering if those would be ever available for the public to see, just to get a general scope of the fire. Thank you for the awesome segue.

I have— we have that product for you tonight. I asked the team to do that. We have a group that came in and has been doing not only thermal imaging or IR imaging. They flew up and down the river making sure we didn't have any hot spots back there, but we did have them do a really good flyover and give us a good product for what the fire looked like. It's pretty amazing.

We didn't want to steal everybody's attention away from everything else. It's over here. Once we get done with questions and answers, we'll put that up and we can look at that a little bit. We also have it broken out into 3 neighborhoods. So there's a little bit more of a blown-up part that you might be able to look at and maybe get some answers to some of the folks here that are asking for— to help you out with the assistance part of it.

So we're looking for that. And as we go into this, it's, it's personal for us too. Um, not only do our folks live in, in the neighborhood or in this community, but we have 4 folks that are out of a home also right now, and 7 more people that were impacted by the fire itself into their homes. So we're living this with y'all as part of the division, uh, and we're working on trying to get this stuff together as fast as we can. But we do have that, uh, product here and we'll share it.

Any other questions?

Going once, going twice. Over here on the end.

So I just want to make sure I understood that correctly about the evac zone. You're saying hopefully within a week to get back into our homes?

Uh, yes. Uh, formally, that go is going to stay in place until the hazards are gone. I would, I would love to speculate that it'll be 4 or 5 days. I'm going to go ahead and say a week with the hopes that it's going to be reduced. Abe and his operations folks are going to be reassessing that every day based on the work that's getting done.

I hope the rain last night is going to speed that up, but I don't want to make any, any unrealistic promises. So right now I'm looking at next weekend.

Okay, any more questions?

Looks pretty good to our smaller—. Yeah, okay. So we were going to— oh, just kidding, one more.

Area center, people being there to assist Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Where is this?

Where are they?

The Disaster Assistance Center is at the Tok Visitor Center, so just down down the road here. It's in kind of the back area there. We'll have some signs put up, uh, tomorrow.

Okay, with that, we are going to be spread out amongst the room. Um, you can find any one of us if you want to ask individual questions. We'll be here for you. Um, one more thing, I just want to ask one question that, that for the first few minutes once we have this up, if you live in the affected area, please come on over. If you don't, can you give us a little while for us to be able to look at that before we swarm everybody in?

I don't know how many people here are in the affected area, but if we can let them get the first shot at this and then we'll bring everybody up. We'll keep it up as long as people want to be here to look at it. We'll be around to answer questions. Thank you. Thank you so much.

So you can come look at the maps and ask individual.