PREPARATION AND PREVENTION: DEVELOPING COMMUNITY EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT PLANS IN REMOTE ALASKA
BY JEFF ENNENGA, LISA AMANIQ SHIELD, KENNI PSENAK AND REBECCA BRAUN
A steady burr fills the small, twin-engine, turboprop airplane – currently seating seven –as it glides above the stunning and steep snowcovered mountain slopes of the narrow and winding Lake Clark Pass on a clear, sunny day.
The pass connects Western Alaska with Alaska’s biggest city, Anchorage. The western end of Lake Clark Pass opens onto Lake Clark and just beyond is Alaska’s largest lake, Lake Iliamna. Indigenous communities with thousands of years of place-based knowledge and ties live in the surrounding Lakes Region. And many of them, like the small Village of Igiugig – about 70 people – at the mouth of the Kvichak River on the southwestern end of Lake Iliamna, are accessible only via small aircraft or barge. Flight time varies from one hour to three hours to days depending on the weather, the size of the small plane and the number of stops made to other communities along the way. This is remote Alaska, lying at the southwestern edge of Alaska’s boreal, where taiga meets tundra.
Rural communities and tribes all over Alaska face significant and increasing challenges in addressing all types of climate-related disasters, including the devastating impacts of structural and wildland fires. The scale and complexity of Alaska’s geographical, cultural, and economic landscape complicates all types of fire management and response efforts, creating an urgent need to enhance and build upon community capacities and resources.
Like Igiugig, many of Alaska’s rural and tribal areas are often accessible only by air or water, which limits rapid deployment of firefighting resources and the accessibility of mutual aid. About 60 per cent of Alaska communities (170 of 285) do not have a state-registered fire department, limiting opportunities for funding to obtain appropriate and much needed infrastructure. Nearly all 235 rural Alaska communities lack basic firefighting infrastructure, including fire stations, equipment, and reliable communications systems. In some cases, the limited infrastructure makes it difficult to quickly access water for fire fighting; this often results in significant property damage and loss of life during emergencies. According to Alaska civilian fire fatality statistics, rural Alaska communities have endured 8.7 times more fire fatalities in the last 20 years than areas with fire department capabilities.
On the wildland side, climate change is exacerbating the challenges in Alaska’s carbonrich boreal forests and tundra landscapes. Increasing Arctic temperatures, increasing permafrost loss, longer fire seasons, more lightning and changing precipitation patterns are leading to more frequent and severe wildfires. According to the Alaska Fire Science Consortium’s 2025 edition of the report Alaska’s Changing Wildfire Environment by the University of Fairbanks, these trends are expected to continue, putting more communities at risk.
A 2022 report, The Role of First Nations Guardians in Wildfire Response & Management: A Proposed National Strategy, predicts that Alaska could experience an increase in annual acres burned by as much as 150 per cent by 2050, and these fires aren’t limited to fire-dependent ecosystems like much of the arctic boreal. Over the past 20 years, the tundra, shrub and grass dominated-Bristol Bay region – located in salmon rich southwestern Alaska and covering 40,000 square miles –has experienced a 7,500 per cent increase in acres burned. In 2022, more acres burned in Bristol Bay than the entire previous 72 years combined.
A steady burr fills the cabin as the twin-prop plane glides through Lake Clark Pass — where taiga meets tundra, and fire response means survival.
In remote Alaska communities, evacuation routes – when they’re available – are often limited, complicating emergency response efforts. Additionally, most communities lack response resources and community wildfire protection plans for effective defense and response effort; this impacts community member health, including from wildfire smoke. Evacuation and standard response tactics, such as retardant drops on subsistence landscapes, can also inhibit subsistence activities and jeopardize food security for years.
Fire safety education, including public health information, is crucial in rural areas where access to emergency services is extremely limited. Communities are often unsure who to contact for specific fire training, prevention and information needs. A significant number of communities, nearly 83 per cent of which are rural, lack the resources and expertise needed to deliver effective fire safety education, contributing to the disproportionate rate of fire fatalities in these areas. Fire communications for prevention, education and response also need to reflect diverse audiences and be tailored for communities.
Traditional ecological knowledge, along with culturally appropriate and inclusive Indigenous knowledge, can play a crucial role in developing effective fire management strategies.
The in-community training course, Fire Incident Response Education, Guardianship and Preparedness (FIRE GAP), focuses on rural Alaska community fire resiliency, and mitigating the risks and impacts of all types of fire in rural Alaska. Launched in 2024, FIRE GAP is a pilot training program offered by Alaska Venture Fund’s Alaska Wildfire Resilience Initiative. Trainers with extensive wildland and structural fire and fire education backgrounds travel to communities to offer in person training, as well as provide remote technical support. While currently waiting to secure additional funding, 10 remote rural Alaska communities are primed to launch their own FIRE GAP trainings.
The FIRE GAP training empowers community members to prevent and manage structural and wildland fires; it provides tools for community education and building a scalable training program. FIRE GAP includes mentoring individual community members to pursue additional emergency response training certifications and guidance on how to acquire the necessary firefighting equipment.
FIRE GAP bridges knowledge and skills gaps and builds upon limited or no response capabilities, so that rural Alaska communities can make informed and locally led decisions about emergency fire planning and response. Components of the training include outreach with youth to maximize a holistic approach to community engagement and foster potential future workforce opportunities.
To enhance community response resources and capabilities, appropriate fire prevention equipment is recommended by the FIRE GAP technical assistance team in partnership with federal and state agencies and when possible, provided, based on a community’s capacity. Available equipment includes water extinguishers, backpack fire pumps, home fire blankets, battery-powered weed blowers, weed trimmers, chainsaws, and hedge trimmers. In collaboration with the American Red Cross, home assessments and training courses are offered, including residential smoke alarm installations, and first aid and CPR training. Additionally, in partnership with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium’s Healthy Homes project, communities can install PurpleAir monitoring systems, which collect air-quality data.
Nearly 60 per cent of Alaska’s communities have no registered fire department. FIRE GAP can change that — one village at a time.
FIRE GAP aims to enhance community-led capacity by implementing tailored fire gap training programs in Alaska’s rural and tribal regions. Technical instructor teams, consisting of experts in wildland and structural response, and public education are trained to work in remote areas through a train-the-trainer course; this training includes developing comprehensive skills and cultural competence to foster respectful and effective collaboration with Indigenous communities.
In April 2024 Alaska Venture Fund’s Alaska Wildfire Resilience Initiative team travelled to Igiugig to begin building the FIRE GAP training in partnership with the community. Over the next year, Igiugig and the team strategized, developed curriculum, trained trainers and built a menu of fire education and training options for rural Alaska communities to choose from. In January 2025, FIRE GAP lead Lisa Amaniq Shield and trainer Paul Pellegrini, a retired wildland and urban firefighter and trainer, travelled to Igiugig to pilot the co-created FIRE GAP training. This included components for the entire community as well as activities targeted for different ages and interests. Everyone who was in town was offered training. Activities occurred at the library, the school, and tribal offices. Community members who were housebound received one-on-one training in their homes.
The training included discussions, demonstrations, scenario modeling, and games. For part of the week, participants chose one of two tracks, (1) community preparedness and education and (2) fire response. Younger elementary school-aged children worked through a series of original stories written by Shield, illustrated by Iñupiaq artist Crystal Jackson, and published in a limited run for the Igiugig training.
Animals are the main characters in the books, which weave in Yugtun (Central Yup’ik) language and interactive activities. Children were given small drums, and in the first story, children beat the drums to the rhythm of the smoke alarm. Subsequent stories call on the children to create words and movements to pass on the animals’ fire safety lessons using traditional ways of teaching, through song and dance and storytelling.
The training culminated in a community potluck where the children performed the dance, sharing the lessons they learned and inviting community members to learn the dance. Martha Crow was one of the adults who joined the children. She said it was uplifting to see the children integrate Yup’ik language and use dance to diffuse the weightiness of the week’s lessons: “It was heavy topics; we heard real-life experiences about deaths that could have been prevented. The music and the dance and the singing really did bring a healing finish.”
Participants say they are already using what they learned. Crow said she plans to clear the wild sedge around her house to reduce fire risk and is evaluating her home electronics in light of what she learned about electrical fires.
Another community member, Jeff Bringhurst, said he replaced a smoke alarm and ordered an extra length of hose to ensure water can reach every room in the house.
Bringhurst, who operates the community’s water system and small farm, said the training helped the community address longtime concerns. “There’s a lot of things we’ve been talking about for years in this village – we’ve been fearful about wildfires, so having [teachers] go through all our fire equipment and start to organize it into response-ready [condition] was super helpful. And tell us what we need to get to make us more effective.”
No two communities are alike. Addressing the unique fire management challenges encountered by rural Alaska communities and tribes deserves a comprehensive approach that includes assessing the current capabilities of each community, enhancing or providing essential suppression equipment, and imparting critical knowledge related to structural and wildland fire management.
The FIRE GAP training enhances the safety and resilience of rural Alaska communities. FIRE GAP’s community based collaborative approach better prepares for and prevents disasters by increasing individual preparedness and mentoring those in communities looking to organize around fire management, pursue grant opportunities and gain employment as wildland firefighters.
Crow said she hoped all communities in Alaska could get this training: “There’s all kinds of different learning and thinking opportunities with this training. This is a very much-needed training for all villages in Alaska.”
