Crews are continuing mop-up operations within the perimeter and working to finish containment lines in the US. The Ham Lake Fire as of last night is estimated at 65% contained on the US side and 35% contained overall. There has been little growth on the US side this week as damp weather has allowed the firefighters to attack the fire directly. Some crews have even been released from the US side, particularly crews from urban areas(I thought I had read that someone had seen a St. Louis Park, my home city, crew up there but I can't remember where) that had been providing structure protection. There is an updated map up at Inciweb.org here along with the latest news in detail.
On the Canadian side where it known as Thunder Bay 37, weather has also helped firefighting efforts, but the situation remains serious. There are now three 20-man US hotshot crews in Canada assisting the Ontario MNR and additional Canadian resources continue to arrive.
While we can relax a bit and start to assess what's been lost on the US side, as long as that fire is burning north of the trail and conditions remain dry it's still a threat. I'm not sure of the fuel loads on the Canadian side, because despite all of my trips to the area over the years, I've never actually been on the other side of the border in that area. I imagine it's similar to the US side but I don't know. If it is, keep in mind that this fire raced about 13 miles in one day a week ago. If they can hold it west of Little North Lake and no new fires pop up, things will look pretty good for the Gunflint. But I'm not going to entirely relax until that east side of the fire is contained.
An amusing(to me) side note and a bit of BWCA trivia: When they started kicking out perimeter maps I noticed a lake in the southwest corner area named Japanese.
It's been a while since I've canoed this part of the BWCA, but I've been through the area a couple of times and I knew that lake as Jap Lake. I even double checked my old maps at home. Criminy, I thought, did PC even make it up to the BWCA? When did this happen? I had wondered about the name before and had heard that it was actually an acronym for some early settlers in the area, so the correct name was JAP Lake, for John and Addie Paulson. According to this, the name was changed to Japanese because it was perceived as racist. I don't know if that's actually true, but it's certainly plausible. That BWCA wiki also says that the name was again changed, not sure when, and it's now Paulson Lake. I noticed today that the new maps of the fire perimeter now show the correct name.
And that ladies and gentlemen, is your BWCA trivia for the day.
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