The Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection relies on local, state, and federal wildland fire partners to assist when we are experiencing extremely active fire seasons that exceed the capacity of Alaskan firefighting resources. As the nation’s current highest wildfire priority, this is a time when these enduring partnerships really matter. Two of the critical ways that we can augment Alaskan crews to protect Alaskan communities, infrastructure, and other values are through the Northwest Fire Fighting Compact (NW Compact) and state-to-state agreements.
The NW Compact is one of eight wildland firefighting Compacts across North America. Compact members include wildland fire agencies in the United States and Canadian provinces. Within each compact, firefighting resources and personnel can be deployed efficiently and quickly to suppress wildfires. Member agencies include the U.S. states of Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington as well as the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and the Yukon and Northwest Territories. We currently have four crews mobilized in Alaska using the NW Compact.
State-to-state agreements provide an opportunity, through the leadership of the National Association of State Foresters (NASF), to mobilize firefighting resources from states across the nation. NASF provides a critical connection to other states’ firefighting agencies that have the capacity to respond in our time of need. There are six crews working in Alaska currently using state-to-state agreements.
Both of these mechanisms bolster Alaskan firefighting resources and are being used currently as there have been more than 420,000 acres burned this year with multiple large wildland fires across the landscape.
Categories: Active Wildland Fire, AK Fire Info, Alaska DNR - Division of Forestry (DOF), BLM Alaska Fire Service, Northwest Compact
Alaska Wildland Fire Information 