Transcripts

DAN KRAKER: On Monday, the Pagami Creek Fire raged out of control. Winds gusting to near 40 miles per hour drove the fire nearly 18 miles in one afternoon. Superior National Forest District Ranger Mark Van Every described the fire at a community meeting in Ely last night.

MARK VAN EVERY: So we have never seen this kind of fire growth in one day on this forest in any kind of recent history.

DAN KRAKER: He says when a fire moves that fast,

MARK VAN EVERY: It doesn't matter how much aircraft we have, it doesn't matter how many people we have, there's not anything we can do that's going to be effective.

DAN KRAKER: But a light rain fell over the fire Monday night and again last night, along with much cooler temperatures that caused the fire to back down and smolder. Officials are expecting similar fire behavior today. They're only predicting the fire to spread a quarter mile. But Van Every says they've been burned before on this fire by weather predictions gone bad. So yesterday, he announced the closure of a huge section of the BWCA from east of Ely to just south of a long stretch of the Gunflint Trail.

MARK VAN EVERY: Again, we don't know how far this fire might spread in a successive day, and we don't want somebody out there that could be at risk. And we don't want to have to put our people out there to try to get them out of the way. We don't have enough people and we don't want to put anybody at risk.

DAN KRAKER: The busy summer season is past, but the closure still means a loss of business for canoe outfitters in the Ely area.

ROGER NYQUIST: So it's kind of game over for a lot of the outfitting at this time.

DAN KRAKER: Roger Nyquist works at Kawishiwi Lodge on the shores of Lake One near where the fire started. Speaking outside the Ely meeting, he says September bookings were solid. Still, lodge owner Frank Udovich, who we reached by phone earlier in the day, said outfitters like him are lucky the fire started at the tail end of the summer's paddling.

FRANK UDOVICH: The bulk of the season at this point is behind us. Now, if this were August, I guess financially, we'd be in trouble. But most of the canoes that I had out on the water, they were going to come back on Sunday anyway.

DAN KRAKER: But for Peter McClelland, his busy season hasn't started yet. He runs White Wilderness Sled Dog Adventures in the National Forest, only six miles from the fire's southern edge. He's one of about 240 homes and businesses that have been told to prepare to evacuate.

PETER MCCLELLAND: We've got a friend who's got a big field. I told her we might be showing up with 100 dogs at any moment. I've got every musher in the area is prepared to bring their trucks over to start hauling dogs if we need to.

DAN KRAKER: Like McClelland, Isabella resident Barb Millard has plans to leave.

BARB MILLARD: We're going to have to get out of here fast. I went home and packed up my documents and wore some clothes, slept in my jeans, [LAUGHS] and was ready to go when they knocked at the door.

DAN KRAKER: But others in Isabella weren't in a laughing mood. Longtime resident Wally Keale thinks the fire should have been suppressed back when it first started on August 18.

WALLY KEALE: You talk to 9 out of 10 people, and it should have been stopped. But they believe in letting the Boundary Waters burn and be nature take care of itself. Well, when it gets away like this, this isn't fair to us, you know what I mean? And the millions of dollars it's going to cost when we don't have any money to start with.

DAN KRAKER: Forest officials say the Pagami Creek Fire has defied all weather predictions and historic models. But now, they're aggressively working to extinguish it. More than 300 firefighters are battling the blaze, with at least 200 more en route.

Big air tankers and helicopters on loan from the National Guard will start bombarding the fire with water today. So unless the weather takes another unexpected turn, firefighters say they'll make progress over the next couple of days. Dan Kraker, Minnesota Public Radio News, Ely.