ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- People evacuated from the eastern Alaska town of Tok returned home Friday after firefighters successfully diverted an advancing wildfire away from houses in the smoke-filled community, fire officials said.
'We fought from structure to structure as that fire moved into the edge of town,' said Pete Buist at the federal Bureau of Land Management fire headquarters in Fairbanks.
'That fire was so hot it created its own lightning storm,' he said.
An all-out effort to save the community of 1,200 paid off when firefighters bulldozed a line around the threatened edge of town and steered flames on a new course around the perimeter of town, Buist said.
'A lot of people are wondering why Tok didn't burn, us included,' Buist said. 'A 'dozer line did what it was supposed to do -- divert the fire. It was a function of 'dozer work, hand work and, not the least, a little help from the wind.'
Flames torched a handful of abandoned buildings, lapped at a Coast Guard communications station and destroyed a makeshift fire communications set-up at a command post but spared occupied dwellings, said Sue Mitchell from fire headquarters.
The 34,000-acre Tok fire tripled in size from Thursday, making it the biggest of the 184 fires burning throughout Alaska, said Pat Flowers of the BLM Alaska Fire Service.
Fires were burning 253,495 acres of state, federal and native lands, and Flowers said, 'The fires are growing steadily.'
Tok remained in danger even as residents returned home, Buist said. Officials warned that new evacuations might become necessary.
Late Thursday flames sent hundreds of Tok residents 12 miles north on the Alaska Highway to the village of Tanacross where the school was opened as a shelter. Other Tok residents went 5 miles farther to the Moon Lake recreation area.
Some Tok residents stayed to protect their homes and 15 locals gathered in the Tok Lodge bar where bartender Chris Rauch said they watched the flames 1 mile away.
Early Friday morning, with cooler temperatures reducing fire danger during the four hours when the summer sun dips below the horizon, the highway link to Canada was reopened and Buist said 'a solid mass' of vehicles filled the road to and from the border.
Hundreds of cars were backed up on each side of Tok when fire and smoke closed the Alaska-Canada Highway Thursday. And in a place where it stays light all night, cars had to drive with headlights on during the smoke-darkened day. Alaska State Troopers predicted new intermittent closures.
The Coast Guard resumed operations Friday at its Loran (long-range aid to navigation) station which was shut down Thursday when flames hurdled a road and advanced on the facility. Crews had cleared brush away and the concrete building survived the flames, said Coast Guard spokeswoman Pamela Foss.
Power was restored to four 700-foot towers that transmit signals to help pilots and mariners navigate, but crews patroled the antenna field to watch for flare-ups and prepare for a new evacuation, Foss said.
Lightning started the Tok fire Sunday. Wednesday the wind-blown blaze jumped over the Tok River. Thursday, it crossed the Alaska Highway. And Friday it continued to devour spruce forests and threaten homes as every available fire retardant bomber in the state plus three from Canada worked the blaze.
Nearly all the fires in the state were sparked by lightning strikes -- as many as 4,000 in a single day. More than 900 firefighters battled the blazes with half the crews in Tok. Alaska Gov. Steve Cowper declared an emergency Thursday and called up National Guard troops to help. But half the 184 blazes were unmanned, Flowers said, because they posed little threat.
A banner headline Friday in The Anchorage Times screamed 'Alaska on fire!'
Above-normal temperatures have hit 90 degrees in Fairbanks and along the Arctic Circle during the past week and have been in the upper 80s throughout the fire-ravaged interior of Alaska, turning forests into kindling for lightning.
National Weather Service meteorologist Dan Hancock predicted temperatures would dip to 80 degrees Saturday and slowly fall as a low pressure system brings moist air and showers that may extinguish the continuing lightning and help dampen thefires.
