Tag Archives: Twin Creeks Fire

The city of Kodiak issued a request for residents to reduce water usage on a voluntary basis on Monday. According to a press release, the request comes because the “potential for a water supply shortage continues to increase.” The Monashka Reservoir, the city’s primary water source, has dropped 4 feet from full levels, according to Public Works Director Craig Walton. …

Firewood. Liz West / Flickr Kayla Desroches/KMXT Piles of wood debris line the road following tree salvage in Chiniak. Starting today, people are free to take them. Both wood harvest and replanting is complete, and borough resource management officer Maggie Slife says the borough wants to give the community the chance to stock up on firewood. She says there’s both …

Photo from a U.S. Coast Guard overflight of the Twin Creeks fire in 2015. Kelly Parker / USCG Kayla Desroches/KMXT When the Twin Creeks fire burned the Chiniak forest in 2015, it also took with it the Chiniak library. The structure housed the community’s books, served as a meeting place for kids, and was also the local tsunami shelter. In …

Sitka spruce bark. Josh Blouin / Flickr Kayla Desroches/KMXT Foresters began replanting the scorched areas of Chiniak on Friday. The borough contracted with Washington-based NorthWind Forest Consultants to recover some of the forest’s former luster. It was damaged in the 2015 Twin Creeks fire. Forester David Nesheim, who is currently in Chiniak, says they’re planting Sitka Spruce sourced from the …

Land in Chiniak. Photo by Wade Wahrenbrock Kayla Desroches/KMXT The Kodiak Island Borough Assembly recently agreed to award a contract for the planting of spruce tree seedlings on Chiniak land burned in the Twin Creeks fire. At last week’s regular meeting, the assembly okay’d the agreement with Alaska-based Carter & Carter Enterprises and, before the assembly passed that contract, the …

Kayla Desroches/KMXT The borough has carried out timber salvage in Chiniak since the Twin Creeks fire damaged the forest, and the spruce trees will soon be due for replanting. The Kodiak Island Borough Assembly will review bids from two companies at its regular meeting Thursday night. Alaska-based Carter & Carter Enterprises bid around $186,300 and the other company, Future Forests, …

Kayla Desroches/KMXT A business wants to buy slash – or wood debris – created from the tree salvage in Chiniak and turn it into fuel. Peter Olsen, owner of forestry company Quayanna Development Corporation, says he’s approached borough staff multiple times since the Twin Creeks fire to express interest in the slash. “Commercial timber operations could produce a considerable amount …

Kayla Desroches/KMXT The issue of reforestation in the burned area of Chiniak will come again before the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly at its regular meeting tonight (THURS). The assembly will review a draft for a contract with Anchorage-based Koncor Forest Products to purchase 300,000 spruce tree seedlings. In the regular meeting packet is a letter to Resource Management Officer Duane …

Kayla Desroches/KMXT Kodiak Island Borough staff has an eye toward reforestation in the Chiniak area damaged by the Twin Creeks fire, but first, they need to harvest the trees and see how much they can salvage and sell abroad. Resource Management Officer Duane Dvorak says, right now, A-1 Timber is in the preliminary stages of harvest. “They are doing some …

Kayla Desroches/KMXT Last summer’s Twin Creeks Fire damaged many of the trees in Chiniak, but it left another kind of resource untouched: the archaeological sites buried beneath the earth. That’s one matter the Kodiak Island Borough Assembly addressed at its regular meeting last night before it accepted a timber salvage sale contract with A-1 Timber Consulting. Assemblyman Frank Peterson, formerly …