The following from the Duluth, Minnesota News Tribune:
BY JANNA GOERDT
NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
The Cavity Lake fire burning through the Boundary
Waters Canoe Area
Wilderness blowdown area leapt forward late Sunday, driven by draft winds of
up to 50 mph from a nearby thunderstorm.
By this morning, the fire was burning about
13,000 acres, said U.S.
Forest Service officials.
Two more 20-firefighter crews were ordered to
help fight the fire,
which had become Minnesota's highest-priority fire, said Incident Commander
John Stegmeir. The agency had ordered four water-dropping CL-215 planes and
a small helicopter to help fight the fire.
Ground crews were still unable to approach the
fire because of the
intense heat and flames, Stegmeir said. On Monday morning, crews began
laying sprinkler hoses around buildings that may be in the path of the fire,
including the Tuscarosa Canoe Outfitters and Lodge.
No people, homes or businesses are in immediate
danger, officials
said, though crews are reviewing possible evacuation plans and routes in
case the fire draws closer to the Gunflint Trail corridor. This morning, the
flames were still about a mile away from the road.
The fire is burning much faster and more
aggressively than many Forest
Service officials had ever seen in Minnesota, they said.
"It's acting like a monster out there,' said
Dennis Neitzke, a
district manager for the Forest Service in the Superior National Forest.
On Monday afternoon, a brisk but cooling wind was
still fanning the
flames.
The Forest Service ordered much of Seagull Lake
closed to boat
traffic, both for boaters' safety and to clear the way for water tanker
planes to reload with 1,400 to 1,600 gallons of water to drop on parts of
the fire.
Five two-person crews were also moving through
the BWCAW around the
growing perimeter of the fire on Monday, urging the estimated 40 campers
still in the area to leave, said Forest Service Public Safety Officer Tom
Kaffine. Only the Cook County Sheriff's Office has the authority to order a
full evacuation.
Despite the growing fire, local residents and
business owners mostly
went on with their daily lives. Resident Chris Steele picked raspberries at
his cabin high above Seagull Lake. Voyageurs Canoe Outfitters owner Sue Prom
praised the Forest Service and cooperating agencies for conducting previous
preventive burns to remove large areas of downed trees, even as she questioned
why the Forest Service hadn't attacked the fire more aggressively while it was
smaller.
Some of Prom's clients had been disoriented and
were briefly separated
because of heavy smoke from the fire, she said.
The National Weather Service forecast for
Northeastern Minnesota today
was for gusty northwest winds and low relative humidity. With a cold front
to the east, high press will build, bringing cooler temperatures but
continued relatively low humidity and gusty northwest winds. Winds are
expected to diminish this evening and then turn southerly late night or
Tuesday. Another cold front is expected to come through the Upper Midwest
Wednesday, bringing another chance of thunderstorms and shifting winds.
The following observation from an experienced
forester living in
Duluth:
How short peoples' memories are. This fire
is behaving like the ROY
LAKE FIRE of 1976, when the weather people were amazed that with a wind
speed of 0, the fire had a forward rate of spread that would indicate a wind
speed of 10+ mph. Northern Minnesota does not dry out very often, but when
it does -- look out! My lawn in Duluth is brown. I can't remember
the last
time the grass went dormant for lack of water, but it has to be at least 20
years. 3 weeks ago, the DNR was complaining about the difficulty of
controlling fires because the large fuels were so dry. Total precipitation
since then has been negligible and the large fuels have to be incredibly
much drier. Glad I'm not up on the Gunflint Trail today!
My comment on the situation in Northern
Minnesota:
How about our long memories? This thing
sounds just like the Hinckley
(Minnesota) Fire over a hundred years ago, the only difference being the dry
slash everywhere then was from logging and clearing and this time (also
shortsighted and manmade) it is reluctance to manage the forest or even
clear out the large amount of downed (and useful at the time) fire material
(Trees for readers living in cities of over 500,000) after the recent storms
that put it there was an even greater travesty on the part of those that
supposedly knew or "know" better.
At least the wood went to good purpose (lumber
and creation of
farmland) before the Hinckley Fire. The fact that knowing what we do today
about fires and forest management and all the financial and community good
that could have come from clearing this downed stuff (to say nothing of the
idiocy of not managing the trees in the first place for timber and wildlife
and hunting and the local communities) and then proceeding to let this
happen. What "reason" will we hear from the "experts"?
Global Warming? Too few wolves? Not enough government funding?
Too few people to fight fires or put on environmental education classes? A
need for "new legislation"?? The "role" of the National Park
Service is "protection"?? Not enough "grant funding" for
research and propagandizing the public? Some mysterious new "Invasive
Species"? Why oh why aren't Universities, foresters, wildlife
biologists and other knowledgeable folks shouting about how these things happen
and what must be done?? It is just getting worse and worse all across the
nation.
Think about these things and ask yourself what
you can do to turn
things around. The decision is up to you.
Jim Beers
18 July 2006
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