A second day of scattered thunderstorms and gusty, erratic winds caused several of the fires in the Bean Complex to grow. The Tanana River Fire (#310) spotted across the Tolovana River along the western perimeter. Smoke continues to impede helicopter use for fire suppression and firefighter transport. As point protection succeeds on other fires in the Complex, crews and resources are shuttled by boat from west to east on the Tanana River to attack these spots. Long distances and strong river currents make this a two-day trip to move a crew and their supplies into place.
With continued warm and dry conditions and the threat of lightning, a Red Flag Warning remains in effect for the fire area through midnight today. Today will be a few degrees cooler with slightly higher relative humidity, but with continued chances for late day and evening thunderstorms.
Alaska Wildland Fire Information
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The tri-annual disaster exercise drill at Juneau International Airport is set for July 23.
According to CCFR Assistant Fire Chief Ed Quinto, it is training that is required by the FAA.
"It's a requirement every three years, the FAA requires that we do what's called a full-scale disaster exercise," Quinto said. "That means we do a mock accident that occurs with an aircraft that's the biggest aircraft that comes in on a normal basis. In this case, we have an Alaska Airlines 737 and about 130 people that are technically get injured."
Quinto explained what the day of the exercise will be like.
"During the day, we'll still have normal operations so aircraft and airplanes will still take off and land," Quinto said. "We will be off to the side. And then we'll have multiple victims, 50 to 80, depending on how the airport crews are setting up, so we'll have a tone-out as normal. We'll turn out the crash trucks. We'll have people all over the place simulating that they are injured. They're all bleeding and have bruises and bone sticking out."
KTKU-FM 105 Juneau
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It’s been dangerously dry for quite some time now for many across Alaska. Anchorage has just seen 0.07" of rain since the start of June, but there is hope in the coming days. Thanks to a pattern shift, rain and cooler weather is set to spread east across the state.
Temperatures today will still be warm for much of Alaska, outside of areas west of the Parks Highway. We’ll see highs in Southcentral in the 60s and lower 70s, with highs several degrees cooler in Southeast as well. The warmest location will be for portions of the Interior, where Red Flag Warnings remain in place through the end of the week. Highs for Fairbanks and the Eastern Interior, will easily warm into the low to mid 80s over the next several days. This combined with the chance for thunderstorms will lead to the potential for wildfires to easily ignite.
KTUU-TV NBC 2 Anchorage
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