Wildfire near Kodiak claims small community library, forces evacuation

A growing, wind-whipped wildfire continues to burn out of control in Chiniak.

Around 10 a.m. Friday, officials reported that while the Chiniak library has burnt down, the nearby Chiniak K-8 School survived.

The blaze began sometime around 9 p.m. Thursday and may have been sparked by downed power lines. Darron Scott of Kodiak Electric Association said that reports of outages in the Chiniak area began coming in before 9 p.m., though there were no reports of downed power lines. The power is still out past the Chiniak post office.

Flames from the rapidly growing fire were clearly visible all night long from Kodiak City, 10 miles across Chiniak Bay. Kodiak City Manager Aimee Kniaziowski, who serves as the joint city-borough emergency management coordinator, said winds gusting to 60 mph caused the fire to quickly grow, forcing an evacuation of the small community.

“We don’t know where the fire is at. We don’t know how big it is. At about 4:30 this morning it was about 2,000 acres,” she said on the KMXT Morning News. “And that was just an unprofessional estimate, so we expect that it’s even larger than that now.”

She said the U.S. Coast Guard was planning to send a helicopter to the scene to make an aerial survey of the area burned.

Air travel to, from and around Kodiak has been hampered by strong westerly winds that stirred up ash from the Katmai-Novarupta volcanic explosion over 100 years ago, just across the Shelikof Strait. Numerous commercial airline flights were canceled Thrusday evening and Friday morning.

“We were concerned about the ash in the air; that was why when we contacted the state operations folks requesting assistance, they knew they couldn’t send any firefighters or anybody out,” Kniaziowski said. “At least certainly last night because of the ash.”

Several school buses were sent to Chiniak last night to help evacuate residents. A few were brought to the Kodiak Middle School and spent the night. Kniaziowski said many others, about 75 people, checked in and nobody is reported missing.

Kodiak Fire Chief Jim Mullican told KMXT’s Pam Foreman early Friday morning that people are not being allowed past a certain point.

“We have a roadblock set up at Roslyn Beach. Residents will not be allowed beyond that point,” Mullican said. “We are encouraging residents to not even to go out to that area. The fire is still burning and is still out of control.”

Residents of the nearby community of Pasagshak have been warned to prepare for evacuation if the winds change. The forecast calls for westerly winds calming a bit today, but still gusting to 40 mph. A small chance of rain is in tonight’s forecast, with a slightly greater chance Saturday.

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