Superior National Forest officials have detailed the harrowing story of six wilderness rangers who were nearly burned to death in the Boundary Waters during the battle to contain the Pagami Creek fire last year. The rangers all survived uninjured, but the incident has forced the Forest Service to change its approach to wildfires.
The Pagami Creek Fire was a wildfire in northern Minnesota, that began with a lightning strike on August 18, 2011. Over weeks span, the fire spread to over 92,000 acres. The fire spread beyond the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to threaten homes and businesses. The fire was the largest naturally occurring wildfire in Minnesota in more than a century.
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SPEAKER 1: Superior National Forest officials have detailed the harrowing story of six wilderness rangers who were nearly burned to death in the Boundary Waters, during the battle to contain the Pagami Creek Fire last year. The rangers all survived uninjured. But if Dan Kraker reports, the incident has forced the Forest Service to change its approach to wildfires.
DAN KRAKER: On September 12, last fall, a team of National Forest Rangers paddled canoes across Lake Insula in the Boundary Waters, about 25 miles from Ely. Their job was to evacuate any campers still remaining. The best information at the time indicated they had at least a day or two before the fire would reach this point. But as Forest Service spokeswoman Chris Reichenbach recalls, winds roared up to 40 miles per hour, and drove the blaze over 15 miles that day.
CHRIS REICHENBACH: Afterwards, we were hearing firefighters that had, years and years, a lifetime of experience. They said they had never seen anything like this, and never would have dreamed that we could have had that behavior.
DAN KRAKER: In short, unadorned sentences. The Forest Service report details a gripping story, based on interviews with the Rangers on Lake Insula. They were two to a canoe, paddling frantically. The sky turned pitch black and smoky. The noise from the fire roared in their ears. Bats flushed by the fire swooped above their canoes. The report details events when two of the rangers decide to abandon their canoe.
SPEAKER 2: The fire's coming. It's pitch black. Jess pulls off a rubber boots and shouts over the wind to Jamie, it's time to go in. Jamie, you mean now? They slip into the cold water. The canoe swings around and hits Jess in the head. She goes underwater. Jamie is strong, and she shoves the canoe away. It disappears with their gear.
DAN KRAKER: The report goes on to say they're able to open one of their emergency fire shelters, a firefighter's last resort.
SPEAKER 2: They struggle to keep their heads above water, and Jamie's life jacket is riding up and choking her. The water is cold, and the waves are big, and they think they're going to drown. Within minutes, it's suddenly hard to breathe. They hesitate to lift the shelter. Will the air outside sear our lungs? They need breathable air. They open it a crack. It's black outside, except for the huge sparks of flying fire, like someone's shooting machine guns at them.
DAN KRAKER: After what they estimate to be 45 minutes in the water, they make it to a rocky outcropping and escape the water. Meanwhile, the other four had beached their canoes on a nearby island. They crawled in their fire shelters as they were pelted by flaming embers. In the end, all escaped unharmed. This narrative is more than just a compelling read. It's designed to identify what worked well, and what changes fire managers should make in the future to prevent a similar close call. Chris Reichenbach says the report revealed several of the rangers hesitated to use their fire shelters, even with the fire bearing down on them.
CHRIS REICHENBACH: There is somewhat of a stigma, and we're working really hard to overcome that perception, that some people have, that maybe the fire shelter is that last, last, last ditch effort, and people don't want to recognize that that's where they're at.
DAN KRAKER: The analysis did call for several changes in battling future fires. It recommends using more canoes with motors and airplanes to speed evacuations. The report also says better communication is needed among fire fighters and Forest Service rangers on the front lines. And Carl Skustad an assistant forest ranger in Ely, says it calls for better fire prediction modeling that takes into account the hotter and drier conditions of the past several years.
CARL SKUSTAD: We actually have our fire research and science working on the modeling systems, and then also working with National Weather Service to incorporate some more of these factors into our modeling and our forecasting, so that we can get some of these outliers predicted better in the future.
DAN KRAKER: On Monday, Skustad takes over as acting district ranger in Ely. He replaces Mark Van Every who's moving to a job in Texas. Van Every took a lot of flak last year for the Forest Service decision not to immediately extinguish the Pagami Creek Fire, before it had a chance to spread to 100,000 acres. Internal Forest Service reviews of those controversial management decisions have been delayed for months, but Chris Reichenbach now says they're likely to be released in the next three weeks. Dan Kraker, Minnesota Public Radio News, Duluth.