Much of the expense borne by feds, but state share substantial
The total cost of this summer’s heavy firefighting season won’t be known until later this fall but as this is published the tally is above $125 million. This combines state expenditures (about $74 million and an additional $36 million paid for by the state but reimbursable by the federal government) and an additional $15 million-plus expended by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for fires on lands it is responsible for in Interior Alaska. The BLM number is as of June 20 but the state estimates are current. Much of the state’s estimated spend will wind up paid for by the federal government. The 164,000-acre Swan Lake fire on the Kenai Peninsula is almost entirely on federal land, for example.

Still, the state-only dollars are big. It will result in a large supplemental budget request to the Legislature next spring. The FY 2020 budget has $13.6 million in state general funds and authority to receive $11.9 million in federal funds. Additional funds were requested as the scale of the fires became known. At the peak of firefighting the state Division of Forestry had over 3,000 at work, most drawn from Lower 48 forest fire crews.