Mayor Jim Whitaker will introduce an ordinance to form a three-member commission to review wildfire response. The commission would seek to find out whether the Boundary and Wolf Creek fires should have been stopped by state and federal firefighters when first discovered, Whitaker told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.
``From a local perspective we do not have the authority to compel testimony or impose conclusions on them,'' Whitaker said. ``We do have the authority to influence. Our purpose is to avoid what happened last summer.''
The Boundary fire northeast of Fairbanks closed the Steese Highway and forced hundreds of people to evacuate homes and the Fort Knox gold mine.
The Wolf Creek fire burned on both sides of Chena Hot Springs Road roughly 50 miles east and north of Fairbanks.
Both started in limited suppression areas and were allowed to burn unchecked when they ignited in June. Weeks later, they threatened homes. Neither destroyed homes but cabins, sheds and outbuildings burned.
In interviews and public meetings this summer, state firefighters said they were handcuffed by policy decisions that defined when and where they could suppress fires.
Officials will have a statewide meeting in two weeks in Anchorage to discuss Alaska's record fire season, during which more than 6.4 millions acres burned, the most on record. Internal reviews will be made public then, said Joe Stam, chief of fire and aviation for the Department of Natural Resources.
Hank Bartos, the borough assembly chairman, supports Whitaker's ordinance. Fire management was out of the borough's control but the borough was deeply affected, he said.
Smoke from the fires throughout Interior Alaska curtailed tourism and created health issues, Bartos said. A report would give the borough a voice to the appropriate state and federal agencies, he said.
``We're going to make recommendations on how to do this thing better,'' Bartos said.
Whitaker said he believes firefighters and land managers did not act appropriately when the fires first started.
``My own opinion is that we should have fought that fire sooner than we did,'' he said.
