The Card Street fire is now 95 percent contained, and crews will finish fighting it soon.
Division of Forestry Public Information Officer Andy Alexandrou said the total personnel working on the fire is down to 10 crew members. They will focus on mop-up activities and repairing the land disturbed by creating bulldozer lines, he said.
“There’s no set time frame for it,” Alexandrou said. “As long as it takes to replace the vegetation that was removed to construct the fire breaks. It’s just a matter of how the work progresses.”
Alexandrou said the fire’s incident commander predicts the crew will be done repairing the fire’s bulldozer lines by Friday.
As of Monday, the Card Street fire had accumulated nearly $6.5 million in costs, said Timothy Evans with the Alaska Joint Information Center.
Evans said costs are still being accumulated, and a final dollar amount is not yet available. When the final cost is tallied, it will be given to the Division of Forestry Kenai/Kodiak Area Office in a report.
“They will not have the package until (the fire’s) 100 percent contained,” Evans said.
Evans and Alexandrou both estimated that final costs for the Card Street fire might not be ready until winter.
Alexandrou said one reason it takes so long for costs to be tallied is that needs for the fire are often outsourced to the Lower 48. For example, he said it takes a while to track down the costs of transporting a Lower 48 firefighter to the airport and then to a specific fire in Alaska.
“There’s just a big long line of dollars being spent,” Alexandrou said. “That’s why it takes so long for the all the dollars to get accounted for.”
Reach Megan Pacer at megan.pacer@peninsulaclarion.com.
