7:00 PM update

Live blogging the 7:00 PM conference on WTIP

• Good weather today! "Very good day"
• Lots of clouds, low winds, low temp
• Still, no additional structure losses last night and today. Total structures lost 134 (phew 44 on the wilderness outpost alone)
• $3.7 million lost
• "Good news and more good news"
• Sag is cooling down
• all lines around the fire held today
• The controlled back burn (on wed) was a 100% success and saved the south side of gunflint. It is also cooling off
• The "finger" is more narrow and more west than the map shows
• The "finger" missed all structures

7:10
• 25 teams of 5 fire engines "strike teams" on structure protection
• Bulldozer line off power-line to protect loon and gunflint
• Tomorrow, wind coming out of the east, south east, could push back towards Gunflint
• Info is difficult to transmit. Mostly done by car.

7:15
• This fire is not out. If there is more wind, there will be substantial growth.
• Don't get overconfident, this fire could still make big runs with any wind
• WTIP is on the air until midnight and then back on air at 8:00
• only one meeting tomorrow at 10:00 AM.

Some context

I found this great webpage called BWCAwiki.org that is a "wiki" or publicly editable database for just BWCA topics (vs Wikipedia that has everything) Anyway, they have a chronology of fires up there, and I found the ones that I was most familiar with. I think it provides a good perspective:

1995 sag fire = 20 sq miles

2003 South Seagull fire (prescribed) =6.25 miles

2005 Alpine fire = 2 sq miles

2006 Cavity Lake fire = 50 sq miles

2007 Ham Lake fire = 82 sq miles and growing

Thats a total of about 165 square miles, 140 of those in the past 5 years.

Great interactive map

The Duluth News Tribune has a great interactive map of the fire progression from its start last saturday until yesterday night. The jump from wednesday to thursday is truly spectacular and again shows how well that controlled burn did at keeping the fire at least on the north side of gunflint. It effectively closed the door to the south side of the lake that would have meant all the cabins as well as loon lake would have been hit.

Small update

From a report read on WTIP

• The "finger" is 12 miles long
• the head of fire is 2 miles wide, past rush lake nearing alpha lake
• No additional structures affected, however they are doing a survey now.
• 585 people on the fire
• Lots of trucks, planes, and helicopters
• Cost as of last night, $2 million

I have updated the Google Map to reflect the southern progression past rush lake (my best guess) and to bring it more in line with the official map.

Also a sort of fun link, check out the smoke plume being generated by this fire!

East Bearskin

Some news from East Bearskin via Jane, my Dad made it up there safe and is with Jim working on sprinklers and such. That is good to hear. She said the fire team knows of their location should anything flare up and force a mandatory evacuation. Things sound intense up there, but its good to know we have lots of professionals who have been preparing for this since July 5th 1999 working their hearts out. They will get some big applause for all of their work through this I am sure.

Wind is the big question now. WIth that several mile long finger sticking it self right down between Loon and Gunflint lakes and Poplar lake. Its a thin finger now, but if the wind moves to the East it could push this finger in a large front west towards Gunflint lodge. Or if the wind turns the other way, it heads towards trail center.

The forecast calls for winds to be easterly 5-15 today, and then turning Northerly later. Isolated shower possible late tonight Tomorrow will be cool with low winds that will trend south east. Then sunday to monday, there is a 40-20% chance for thunderstorms

Yesterday was the bad day it seems with dry, hot and very intense wind. Now we are getting back into normal cool spring weather and that is good news.

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.

Noon update

BIG maps (3.5 megs) out now from MNICS that I showed a photograph of this morning. It was a huge file, and I have compressed it with photoshop. Here is a zoomed in portion showing this new blob of fire that has crossed down over the trail and currently is the greatest threat to the central trail. Click for a bigger view.



Here is the big picture, again click for a larger view.

New Map!

From WTIP here is an actual photograph of a fire map! I am glad to say that my drawing of it was too large. I will be updating the google map now.

Update: Google Map update. Now I see why they keep saying no new structures have been effected, as this fire has done this weird finger out of the north cutting off the Gunflint trail. Hopefully they can contain this bulge before it turns into its own fire.

Update 2: Also take a look at how well that controlled burn worked, the fire stopped right along that edge.