Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

BOB KELLEHER: It was the perfect day for a fire on the banks of Snowbank Lake, which lies across the border of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The lake also marks the western tip of the massive blowdown area stretching from near Ely, almost 30 miles east across the wilderness, to the Gunflint Trail.

The woods covering the peninsula here are a green and gold patchwork of standing pine and aspen, but it's a pattern stuck like a pincushion with broken trees. Some lean heavily to the east. Others lie broken on the forest floor.

JIM HINES: Who does not have a shift plan?

BOB KELLEHER: Fire boss Jim Hines tells his crew wind and humidity are just right for a vigorous burn, but a burn that firefighters can keep under control. The target area is almost completely surrounded by water, and the prevailing winds would carry any flaming material out over the lake. At just under 100 acres, this is a relatively small fire, but Hines describes it as the first bite out of a much larger apple.

JIM HINES: This is like an anchor point. And we're going to start here with some smaller burns and then progressively move across the landscape until we get the whole thing taken care of.

BOB KELLEHER: Last week, Forest Service staff burned two sections of blown-down timber near northeast Minnesota's Gunflint Trail. They found some of the trees blown down in the same 1999 storm burned hotter than expected. The Snowbank will provide more information as the Forest Service prepares even larger fires of 1,000 acres or more.

A few area residents have gathered to witness the fire. Debra Henk of Ely says some folks are concerned about even prescribed fire. It was a prescribed burn, after all, that got out of control in New Mexico, incinerating thousands of acres.

DEBRA HENK: Well, I think especially with the news this summer about fires that didn't follow the route that they were supposed to follow, I think people are very interested in how well this is going to be controlled

BOB KELLEHER: For this burn, firefighters take to boats. Small float planes are soon circling above to keep an eye on the fire and to help douse any hot spots should the fire get away. This fire starts from the air as well. A black and white helicopter hovers low over the tree line, swinging a red barrel below. Soon, flaming gasoline is falling from the barrel and orange flames begin exploding in the aspen and pines.

Dead trees become candles, and then torches. Balsam firs vanish in crackling explosions of flame. Black and gray billows from the woods and circles into a growing column that spreads over the blue water. A wonderful smell of burning wood becomes a choking blanket of heat and ash. Soon the winds pick up. Burning embers, leaves, bits of wood are flying from the woods.

The Forest Service's Andy Drange fought fires in Montana for much of the summer. He's seen the way fire creates its own wind.

ANDY DRANGE: Well, the fire, it needs oxygen. So it sucks in all the oxygen it can get and it creates its own wind like this.

BOB KELLEHER: But the fire remains under control. It does what it's supposed to do. Floating in a small boat a safe distance away, Forest Service spokesman Mark Van Every says the burn has gone well.

MARK VAN EVERY: I think things are going real smoothly. The burning activity is about what we anticipated and things are staying within the containment lines. We're not getting any spotting and the smoke dispersal seems to be going pretty well.

BOB KELLEHER: Most of the work on this fire finished Wednesday, although mopping up could take up to a week. But the fire crews have plenty more to do. Many of them will be in Canada's Quetico Provincial Park today as Canadian officials light a much larger fire just north of the BWCAW. Another crew plans a third burn along Minnesota's Gunflint Trail. If the weather holds up, several more fires will be set before the season's first snows bring the fall fire season to an end. In Duluth, I'm Bob Kelleher, Minnesota Public Radio.