History of Fire

Not much news coming in, just a re-hash of this morning's 10:00 meeting. There will be another one at 7:00, so tune in for that.

The Duluth News Trubune wrote an article with two issues that I wanted to talk about. There was this,

It was unclear if it was fire from an intentional fire conducted Wednesday night, or elements of the original wildfire, that spread into Canada on Thursday pushed by 35 mph west winds that later shifted from the north.

They were the first to report this (I posted it a bit back) but from what I heard on WTIP this morning and on the star tribune last night, they were just wrong and it is clear back burn clearly saved much of the north end of the trail. Amazing work.

Second was this,

Already the most destructive fire in terms of lost buildings since 1918, it’s now probably Minnesota’s largest wildfire since then as well.

I went back to my now unpacked "The Boundry Waters Wilderness Ecosystem" by Miron Heinselman, a MUST have for anyone interested or living around the BWCA. Heinselman's made extensive maps of the fire history in the BWCA. Below here I have photographed a map of the fire activity during the modern "suppression period" where all and every forest fire was snuffed out as soon as it was found.



Now, look at his historical record of the amount of square miles burned in the BWCA over history:



As you can see, 1910 was the last year there were any significant fire events in the BWCA, with about 80 square miles burned. This nearly 100 year gap, combined with the blowdown of 1999, is what has caused such a explosive and unpredictable fire. There is a natural balance that fires help keep in the BWCA, and with constant suppression over the years potential energy for fire like this has reached extreme levels. The forest service knows better now, and they let more remote fires burn larger, but it all helps explain where this perfect storm has come from.