‘Not just a hillside problem’: looking at the future of Anchorage wildfire fighting funding

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - The Anchorage Fire Department and the Municipality are taking a look at what the future of its wildland fire division, and what the future of wildfire prevention and suppression will look like.

A resolution of the Anchorage Assembly passed on April 14, instructing the Municipality to evaluate the creation of one or more “Wildfire Interface Service Areas,” along with funding mechanisms for AFD for wildfire prevention and response. The current wildland fire division is funded by a four-year federal grant that expires at the end of 2027.

“So what happens when the end of 2027 comes?” Anchorage Fire Chief Doug Schrage asked rhetorically. “If we haven’t found replacement revenue, then the wildfire program, as we have come to experience it, will go away.”

Anchorage is unique from many American cities in its classification of a “Wildland Urban Interface.” Located next to Chugach State Park, the nearby Chugach National Forest increases the risk of a fire, while expansion of the municipality in recent years has elevated that risk, Schrage said.

“There’s a point in space where the built environment — which is the neighborhoods and the businesses and things — bump up against the wildland forested areas,“ Schrage said. ”In reality, there’s no hard interface. There’s overlap. And we have built homes and businesses and infrastructure well into the forested interface, and that creates a real wildfire problem."

With the future of the Wildland Fire Division currently in the air, Schrage said the municipality’s analysis could create a funding solution for the division, and either affirm what is already in place or provide new tactics to prevent, suppress and mitigate wildfires in Anchorage.

“There are communities around the country that have implemented different funding strategies. Some of those examples include per parcel fees, where if you own a property in the interface, you might be asked to pay a fee.” Schrage said.

“One possibility, of course, is property tax, where if ... one of the outcomes of this effort is to create a service area, then the residents and the property owners within that service area would be charged a property tax.”

Some of those areas most at risk are already identified in the 2025 Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) as “moderate-to-extreme wildfire risk zones.”

“If you look at the maps, the hazard maps, the wildland urban interface and the areas with the moderate to extreme danger even, you can find them throughout the bowl and in Eagle River and in Girdwood, right?” said Assembly Member Zac Johnson.

Johnson represents South Anchorage and Girdwood on the Assembly and cosponsored the resolution with Assembly member George Martinez. Johnson is in favor of making the Wildland Fire division a permanent part of AFD following the expiration of the federal grant.

“I believe that having a permanent wildland fire division in the Anchorage Department is essential,” Johnson said. “The fact that we went over a decade without one should really give us pause.”

For residents’ part, both Johnson and Schrage encourage residents to take precautions against wildfires, preparing for a wildfire scenario as Anchorage summers become hotter and drier.

“It’s not just a hillside problem. I think one of the challenges that we’re dealing with in terms of wanting to make sure people understand the threat is that it’s not limited to that part of the city that butts up against the Chugach Forest,” Johnson said. “I mean, you can find high hazard areas anywhere in the Bowl. There’s a lot of them in West Anchorage, even around sort of the more central parts of the community.

“The threat is very widespread.”

To aid in fighting wildfires, Schrage said one of the most effective tactics is “fire-wising” your home, including everything from cleaning out gutters to using fire-resistant landscaping and plants.

“We rely on homeowners to fire-wise their own property,” Schrage said. “And fire-wise is a protocol that is available on wildfire.muni.org, where people can go and receive information about how to harden their homes, make them more resilient against an advancing fire front.

“It only takes a few homes to give us enough to slow down the fire’s growth to enable us to get resources and defenses in place.”

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