Jen Harpe looked over her 5-acre property on a recent weekday afternoon. The Swan Lake fire hadn’t torn into this Kenai Peninsula town this summer, as she worried it might, but it left scars.
Stumps dotted Harpe’s land. Friends had cut down spruce trees, fearing they could ignite. Inside, a stack of family photographs sat on the floor. She had packed them in haste when the fire flared last month.
Harpe still needed to retrieve 40 chickens, three geese and a goat that she had moved north out of harm’s way. Her husband was gone too. He left for Juneau to take a construction job after the fire led to weeks of slow to no business at the fishing company they manage.
“It’s been a devastating summer, absolutely devastating,” said Harpe, still sick from the smoke, her sentences occasionally punctuated with coughs.
While recent rain and cooler weather have tempered the chaos of the flames, Cooper Landing residents, including Harpe, are still dealing with the aftermath of a monthslong wildfire that choked the community with smoke, blanketed it with ash and kept tourists away during the typically bustling summer season.