Wildfires of 2009

South Boney Fire

2009AlaskaWildland fire use

The South Boney Fire burned 7,884 acres in Alaska, in 2009. It was discovered on July 6, 2009, and contained on September 23, 2009. The cause was recorded as natural.

Size
7,884 acres
Discovered
July 6, 2009
Contained
September 23, 2009
Cause
Natural

Map

The burned area boundary MTBS mapped from Landsat imagery, 7,019 acres. Point of origin as reported, 64.821, -152.559.

The record

Reported final size
7,884 acres
Burned area mapped by MTBS
7,019 acres
Area inside the final perimeter
7,373 acres
Discovered
July 6, 2009, 7:15 p.m. local time
Contained
September 23, 2009, 9:00 a.m. local time
Cause
Natural
State
Alaska
Land ownership at origin
Bureau of Land Management
Reporting unit
Alaska Fire Service
Agency
Bureau of Land Management
Unit
AKTAD
Incident type
Wildland fire use
Unique fire identifier
2009-AKTAD-000383
MTBS fire identifier
AK6484315257520090706
MTBS assessment
Extended
Fire occurrence record
W-594347
Perimeter map method
Image Interpretation
Note on the perimeter
Fire perimeter modified using Landsat Image Service. Image ID: LT05_L2SP_073014_20100708_20200823_02_T1.

The three sizes are three measurements: the size the agency reported when the fire was out, the burned area MTBS drew from satellite imagery before and after, and the GIS area inside the final perimeter, unburned islands included. They rarely agree exactly.

From the incident teams’ reports

The status summaries (ICS-209 forms) the incident teams filed: 4, from July 30, 2009 to November 10, 2009. These are the teams’ own estimates, written while the incident was running, and personnel is totaled from the resources each report lists. A fact the reports leave blank is not shown, and a zero on the form is treated as blank.

Cause on the reports
Lightning or other natural
Primary fuel model reported
Dormant Brush, Hardwood Slash
Suppression strategy reported
Confine

Acres reported by day

Acres at the last status summary of each day. Days with no report are not shown.
Reported acres by day, as a table
DayAcresChange from the day before
Jul 30, 2009383
Sep 23, 20097,343
Sep 29, 20097,343
Nov 10, 20097,883

Other large fires in Alaska in 200912

FireAcresStartCause
Railbelt Complex (Minto Flats South) Fire517,078Jun 21, 2009Natural
Little Black One Fire349,450Jun 20, 2009Natural
Big Creek Fire169,639Jul 18, 2009Natural
Titna River Fire164,542Jul 11, 2009Natural
Tonclonukna Creek Fire164,318May 23, 2009Natural
Zitziana Fire141,126Jun 17, 2009Natural
Nowitna Fire126,582Jun 13, 2009Natural
Wood River 1 Fire125,382Jul 12, 2009Natural
Railbelt Complex (Rex Creek) Fire101,150Aug 2, 2009Natural
Stevens Creek 1 Fire85,909Jun 18, 2009Natural
Sheenjek Fire62,658Jul 2, 2009Natural
Rock Slough Fire62,313Jun 30, 2009Natural

Every fire of 2009 Alaska fire history

Sources

Perimeters from the National Interagency Fire Center’s Interagency Fire Perimeter History, compiled from the Forest Service, BLM, BIA, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, the Alaska Interagency Fire Center and CAL FIRE. Burned areas and ignition dates from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), a program of the US Geological Survey and the USDA Forest Service. Fire reports from Short, Karen C. 2022, Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014], 6th Edition, Forest Service Research Data Archive, doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6. Records before 2014 were joined by this site: a fire report to the burned area its MTBS identifier names, a perimeter to the burned area it lies in when the names or the sizes agree. Incident figures from ICS-209-PLUS: St. Denis, Lise A., Karen C. Short, Kathryn McConnell, Maxwell C. Cook, Nathan P. Mietkiewicz, Mollie Buckland and Jennifer K. Balch, 2023, All-hazards dataset mined from the US National Incident Management System 1999-2020, Scientific Data 10, 112, doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-01955-0; data on figshare, doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19858927.v3, licensed CC BY 4.0. This site matched each incident to the fire by the dataset’s own links where it has them, and otherwise by name, start date, state and size, and left out figures too large to be possible for a fire of its size.