Alaska Fire Service
Provides wildland suppression services for Department of the Interior agencies, Alaska Native Corporation lands, and military withdrawn public land under an agreement with the U.S. Army-Alaska. The Alaska Fire Service leads the BLM Alaska’s statewide Fire and Aviation program.
Ensures suppression services are provided on:
- 70 million acres - BLM- administered surface lands
- 51 million acres - National Park Service lands
- 73 million acres - U.S. Fish and Wildlife lands
- 40 million acres - Alaska Native Corporation lands
- 1.6 million acres - Military withdrawn public land under an Interagency Service Agreement with the U.S. Army-Alaska
- 1.2 million acres - Alaska Native allotments for which the Bureau of Indian Affairs has fire management responsibility (non-contiguous parcels 160 acres or less)
The BLM Alaska Fire Service was created in 1982 to lead its statewide fire and aviation programs, provide fuels management direction, conduct and support fire ecology research, and assist with fire planning and policy interpretation. The BLM AFS also manages the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center (AICC) and maintains a National Incident Support Cache (with more than $16 million in inventory). The BLM AFS provides logistical and operational support to agencies, incident management teams, and individual firefighters by operating and maintaining advanced communication and computer systems; overseeing initial and extended attack fire-related resources, and distributing wildland fire information to the public and news media during the fire season.
The BLM Alaska Fire Service operates on an interagency basis, with employees from the Department of the Interior (DOI), U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and State of Alaska. The BLM AFS coordinates daily interagency planning, coordination, and sharing of resources, with each agency’s strengths and resources complementing each other. These interagency employees are vital to the BLM AFS mission.
Two interagency negotiated agreements define roles, responsibilities and expectations; facilitate the exchange of resources and the funding between the cooperating agencies. These agreements provide a mechanism to implement the direction in departmental manuals.
BLM Alaska Fire Service is comprised of the following major components: