Saving a Historic Cemetery From the 2023 Anderson Complex Fires in Nenana, Alaska

Resource Advisor Sarah Hayes uses FieldMaps to document a dozer line built to protect the city of Anderson from the Anderson Complex fires; a suppression repair plan set standards for restoring it once the danger passed. Juan Carlos Jarquin, NPS

In August 2023, two National Park Service Resource Advisors (READs) worked with a local crew to protect a historic cemetery in Nenana, Alaska, from fire. Sarah Hayes, who had worked the 2022 Clear Fire in the same area, mentored Juan Carlos Jarquin, an NPS archeologist on his first official READ assignment.

The threat

The 3,800-acre Shores Landing fire, part of the Anderson Complex, threatened Nenana. The first priority was to find and protect the structures and values at risk — and one of the most important was the Nenana cemetery on the southwest side of town, where many of those buried were victims of the 1920 Spanish Flu pandemic.

The decision: by hand, not by machine

The cemetery had to be protected from the fire and from the firefight. Working with the land manager of the Toghotthele Alaska Native Village Corporation, the Nenana Fire Chief and the Division Supervisor, the READs advised against heavy machinery such as masticators and dozers: the risk to unmarked graves and to the cemetery's integrity was too great.

Together they chose to have a hand crew cut a shaded fuel break about 50 feet wide around the cemetery. Had the fire come closer, it would have been backed up with a hose lay and sprinkler system. The plan satisfied everyone involved, gave fire managers and the community a protection strategy they could trust, and kept the work's own impact low. The cemetery came through unharmed.

After the fire: repairing the firefight

READs work alongside fire crews during suppression, and they often write or advise on a suppression repair plan — restoring the damage done by fighting the fire, not by the fire itself. For the Anderson Complex, that meant turning back dozer lines to cover bare mineral soil and help native plants return, and bringing access roads back to their pre-fire condition.

Resource Advisor trainee Juan Carlos Jarquin surveying a shaded fuel break. NPS

READs are a key link between fire management teams and local stakeholders, making sure the effects of suppression are not longer-lasting or more damaging than the fire. Jarquin said that together he and Hayes "efficiently managed the planning, monitoring, documentation, and advisory roles on suppression activities and subsequent repair," kept up good communication with stakeholders, and strengthened ties with the community as representatives of their home unit, Denali National Park & Preserve — leaving "a positive imprint" on relationships with partner agencies.

Sources

Based on "NPS Resource Advisors work with local land managers to save historic cemetery from 2023 wildfire," NPS Wildland Fire Program, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. A photograph credited to an incident management team is not reproduced.