BWCA wildfire expands slightly; no evacuations

By AMY FORLITI
Associated Press Writer

ALONG THE GUNFLINT TRAIL, Minn. (AP) -- A wildfire in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness grew slightly larger Tuesday, but remained at least a couple of miles away from people and property, officials said.

Carson Berglund, a spokesman for the Minnesota Interagency Fire Center, said the fire had grown to "15,000 acres-plus," or about 23 1/2 square miles.

"When I say plus, heavy on the plus," he said. "They can't see because all of the smoke."

Firefighters got more equipment Tuesday as they worked to keep the blaze away from the Gunflint Trail, a main entry point to the popular canoeing and camping region.

Big tanker planes continued to drop water on the fire, and officials were considering "burnouts" to remove fuel between the wildfire and previous controlled burn areas, Berglund said.

"Right now it looks pretty good," Berglund said. Firefighters were working on foot for the first time in previous burn areas, he said.

Because the fire is expected to burn for several weeks, a "Type I" management team had been summoned. Berglund said he wasn't sure when the team, made up of seasoned fire management officials from around the country, would arrive.

The fire on Cavity Lake near the end of the Gunflint Trail is the largest in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area since 1999, when a fierce July 4 storm blew down millions of trees over 600 square miles of the lake-dotted wilderness.

From the air Tuesday, the pattern of the fire changed constantly.

A thick blanket of white smoke clung to trees for miles, and two thicker and darker smoke billowed above the rest - a sign the fire was burning intensely. In some areas, the smoke was too thick to see the trees and lakes below. On the western edge of the blaze, bright orange flames licked treetops.

South of the trail, the town of Grand Marais was swathed in a thick haze and smelled like a bonfire.

The BWCA, which covers 1 million acres along Minnesota's border with Canada in what is known as the Arrowhead region, contains hundreds of lakes and rivers and is a popular destination for campers and anglers.

Superior National Forest announced restrictions on campfires in the blowdown area. After midnight Tuesday, officials said campfires and wood- or charcoal-burning stoves will not be allowed in the restricted area, though gas or propane cook stoves will still be allowed.

The U.S. Forest Service, which manages the BWCA, has closed several portages and three entry points, along with Round Lake, Red Rock Lake and Seagull Lake.


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Ya it is really Hot, the water bombers sat idled today because the water they were dropping was evaporating before it got to the ground to do any good putting it out, also the smoke was so thick they couldn't see anything below 1000 ft. and water dropped from that height will disapear fast and do nothing to the fire. I could see the smoke from the mine overlook in Eveleth tonight after work at about 7:30 PM looked like rain clouds it was so thick to the northeast

http://kstp.dayport.com/viewer/viewerpage.php?Art_ID=168109

Only if the asshat greenies would not have fought soooo hard to keep the loggers out after the blowdown there would not be a problem now. I'm going up north camping this weekend just south and west of the fire area (FINLAND) .

BURN BABY BURN

I'M WITH YOU DEDXTWO!!!

I was in the bwca a couple weeks after the blowdown. The BWCA will beat this as nature can take care of itself. I've also been through many of the areas that have burned in years past and it is quite amazing actually how much a fire re-juvinates the forest 1-2 years afterwords.

you are correct!!! i work 10 miles away from the turtle,gull, pietro, and clearwater lake fire. which is at about 1200 acres. and today the cavity lake/seagull lake fire is up to 20,000 acres.

Why the hell do you guys want that area to burn down? What the hell did it do to you? That is a beautiful area. Shut the hell up.

TREE HUGGER

http://www.startribune.com/1741/v-video/story/565717.html

Fire will rejuvinate that area and it will be as beautiful as ever in the future. Don't forget that fire is natual. That area burned on a regular schedule before we started fucking with fire surpression. We know it would burn someday, we knew it for decades.

So you shut the fuck up.

more pics here. http://www.boreal.org/fireinfo/Cavity_Lake...to_gallery.html

Cavity Lake fire damage will shock many, official says

The Cavity Lake wildfire “has changed the landscape out there, and it’s going to be shocking when you see it,” a Forest Service official warned residents and vacationers this morning.

“Give yourself a chance to cry, if you need,” said Dennis Nietzke, supervisor of the Superior National Forest. “The landmarks you remember, many of them, are gone.”

“It’s hard not to get a little emotional. One guy told me he lost a lot of friends out there” when millions of trees burned.

But then again, there are the ones who say, "BURN BABY BURN"

Although it is sad to see it burn like that it will regrow and be fine in a few years

yeah, it'll regrow but all the trees will be pecker poles. :banghead:

Those pictures are amazing. They give a little better feel for just how big that fire is.

I've seen those Bombardier planes in action. They've done practice runs on Swan Lake in Pengilly. When those things drop down to pick up a tank of water and pull back up, it's deafening.

Sounds like there were thunderstorms going through the area today, 7/23. No word if it helped or hurt.

i've got a friend who's fighting the fire. lived in crane lake his whole life. that big a fire is nothing to laugh about, but will only make it better. someone said fire is natural, hell ya it is. what about a few hundred years ago?? they woulda just let it burn till it put itself out.

Listen,

Trees like that don't grow back in 1-2 years. More like 10, 20?

Oh, by the way, I'm not a god damn tree hugger. How the hell am I a tree hugger if I ride a snowmobile? I ride trails to see the beauty of nature, and to have fun. Not to ride some blackened wasteland. No shit it will grow back, but not instantly. No shit fire is natural, but considering people are putting their lives on the line to try to stop this fire and it is out of control, it's nothing to encourage. It won't look so pretty when you are sledding through there and there are no trees. :doh:

I am on your side Ian, but maybe U should have used the word canoeing instead of sledding.

You better hope the hell you are not snowmobiling in that fire area next winter, cause it's in the BWCA and it's ILLEGAL son!!!!! PS they are trees and they WILL grow back! And if the damn treehuggers would not have fought to keep loggers out of the area immediately after the big blow down we would have been alot better off now. I just wish the greenies would have all been up there hugging trees, smoking pot, and singing kumbyah while the fires raged!

Ok, do you need a forest ecology lesson?

The primary tree species that grow in the bwca is jack pine or Pinus banksiana. These trees are very shade intolerant, which means they need full sunlight to grow in, and not partial shade of tree canopy. They exhibit an interesting feature in that the cones will not open up until heat is supplied. (Serotinous) They are a valuable pioneer species that are replaced by white and red pine as time goes on. They mature in about 60 years and will fall apart quickley afterwards. I have however, counted rings on jack pine that were well over 100 years old.

The area where jack grows best is located north and west of lake Superior.

So, mr. tree hugger, this fire is the best thing that could happen to the area. The only reason that the fire is being fought is to protect property outside the bwca. You want nature? This is nature at its best.

Good post :div20: It's too bad that these wackos that push their bullshit agenda really doo more harm than good.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


a member of the Sierra club???

Probably not a Sierra Club member. Just an uninformed city dewller. Too bad that city folk don't get the correct information on this kind of stuff more often.

Whatever. Think what ever the fuck you want, I really don't give a shit. I understand that forest fires are good, I'm just saying that people are putting their lives on the line fighting it. It also won't look good for the next 10 years.

Oh, gasp! It's illegal to snowmobile in the BWCA? Oh noes.
It's also illegal to go over 55 MPH, son!!!

The only club I belong to is the MNUSA. http://mnsnowmobiler.org/
In my view, I hate tree huggers. If I'm such a "City Dweller", why do I ride the North Shore and Cass County? Each Weekend? Every Winter (Snow pending)?

Joerocket, my first post wasn't even directed at you, so leave me the fuck alone. Jesus christ, I give my opinion and everyone jumps on me. Just lay off, and I'll stop posting.

Na, I won't lay off you. Stop listining to those liberal teachers and formulate your own opinions. Pretty much everything they try to teach you is wrong.

ever been through Yellowstone?? that is a perfect example of what's happening in the boundary waters, except that was on a way bigger scale. it all needs to happen sooner or later and now was the time it did, get over it cause it's natural.

They should just let that shit burn, cause if they stop it before it burns up the whole blowdown area then it's just going to happen another year when it's dry.

people crying over trees?? WTF......

i've been there and it's a very beautiful area but friggin trees are nothing to cry about.

No, I don't think he is. He seems to be well informed and knowledgeable about the type of trees in that area. :div20:

New growth is sprouting from ruins of BWCA fire already
AP

Next spring, rains will fall on the acres of charred ash from the Cavity Lake fire in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, stirring up seeds that have waited for decades or longer for a blaze to clear the forest and give them sun.
By late spring, a carpet of green wild geraniums will sprout tiny red flowers. Birch saplings will emerge, and lilies and raspberries will follow as nature takes advantage of the opportunity left by the fire.

"What we're seeing with this fire is the tip of the Gunflint Trail returning to its natural cycle," said Lee Frelich, University of Minnesota forest ecologist.


Forest experts say the fire is playing an important role in taking the forest through its natural cycle of death and rebirth. Within three years, they say, new growth of birch, aspen, hazel, mountain maple and mountain ash will be waist-high. A few years after that, the new forest will be hard to walk through, and in a decade some aspen trees will be 20 feet high.

Some officials at the fire said they're already seeing signs of forest regeneration.

"Our people said they saw green grass shoots popping up where the fire started, and that was just two weeks after the fire started," said Barb Soderberg, public service team leader for the Superior National Forest.

---------------------

Federal law stands in way of reducing fire risk in BWCA
Katherine Kersten, Star Tribune

For most Minnesotans, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is a postcard image of a long-ago, fondly remembered canoe trip. The wildfire currently burning there, in the area of the 1999 blow-down near Cavity Lake, is something we read about sitting on our patio.
But for state Rep. David Dill, DFL-Crane Lake, the BWCA is his back yard. Dill represents the sprawling Minnesota Arrowhead area.

"We've been very fortunate with the fire so far," he says. "The weather has cooperated." If luck holds, Dill says, this fire may not threaten life or property.

But the blow-down added greatly to fire danger in the BWCA, and the threat is far from over, Dill emphasizes. "Some people say this fire may just be a warning shot across the bow," he says. "If a fire starts in the right place and the stars align with hot, windy weather, communities like Ely and Tower could face a catastrophe."

Since 1999, Dill -- like many in his district -- has advocated measures to prevent such a catastrophe, and simultaneously to manage the area's resources better. But these steps were never seriously considered, he says, thanks to rigid federal rules and concerns about lawsuits by environmental groups.

For example, after the blow-down, loggers removed highly flammable dead trees in a corridor just outside the BWCA. They went across the ice in winter, Dill says, and had minimal impact on the environment. This significantly reduced fire risk in nearby areas, he says.

Similar "salvage logging" could have been performed at strategic sites in the BWCA. But wilderness rules forbade it. "They would have had to go in there with a handsaw and a dogsled," Dill jokes.

Dill isn't trying to change the BWCA's wilderness status. He guided canoe trips as a boy, and today his living room windows look out over beautiful Crane Lake. Instead, he argues for flexibility. "When there's a catastrophic threat to the community," he says, "we need to be able react with a response proportionate to the threat we face."

But devotion to the romantic myth of pristine wilderness prevents reasonable compromise.

Dill chuckles at the 1964 law that created the BWCA as a wilderness area -- a place "where the Earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man." In fact, he says, the BWCA was "logged out" between the turn of the century and the 1930s. Roads were built, and massive areas were clear-cut.

"That pine built the city of Chicago," Dill says. "The world's largest white pine sawmill was here in Orr."

Dill acknowledges that fires generally benefit forests by regenerating them. But over the decades, he says, human interference in the BWCA has built up a huge, unnatural fuel load, and the blow-down has added to it. "We have to take that reality into account in protecting our communities," Dill says. The debate over the Cavity fire is the latest instance of what Dill calls a clash between two philosophies.

"A week ago, my wife and I paddled across five lakes, and heard the loons calling," Dill says. "But when I got home, I still had to make my mortgage payment."

Folks who like to dictate from afar sometimes forget this. "People in the Twin Cities sit in the Wells Fargo Center and dream about the romance of the forest," he points out. "I wonder, do they ever stop and ask where their toilet paper comes from, or the paper that makes their copiers run?

"They may not like to think about that reality," Dill says. "But we have to live here."

:cn:

Sounds like great grouse habitat in about 7 years! I will be there!

:div20: These two are right on the money! I just wish the rest of the dumb fuks would listen. Maybe someone ought to sue the nature-nazi groups for once.

Where is loudhandle when ya need him!

BWCA fire 85% contained

http://www.startribune.com/462/story/594005.html

http://www.johndee.com/discuss/messages/5/23848.jpg

Well, I didn't know it was THAT small, lol. Sorry about what I said earlier... it's like a little needle mark!

Yes it is NOT Legal to use any motorized vehicles in most of the BWCA,NOT EVEN A BIKE,if you grew up here you would understand the animosity i feel twords the enviros and the puppet forest managment ,if burns it burns,i hope it takes the northstar chapter of the sierra club with it.