Ham Lake Fire: Things got a bit hairy on the Gunflint yesterday as the wind picked up and shifted from the west. They had started to allow some people in to grab belongings or check the status of their homes but sudden flare-ups and the wind shift quickly put an end to that. Areas where the fire had burned through or around and that were thought to be safe, suddenly weren't. Sue Prom calls it Whack a Mole and recounts how the fire started this past weekend at the Boundary Waters Blog. The Duluth News Tribune reports:
“We had a lot of fire activity today in the residential area, and we lost at least one additional structure, apparently an outbuilding,” Mike Martin, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman, told reporters at an 8:30 p.m. briefing near Gunflint Lake. “The local fire departments had a lot of saves today. … The fact we had that much fire up there and didn’t lose many more buildings is amazing.’’
Updated information on the current status of the fire is frustratingly difficult to find this morning. The feds are testing a website at www.inciweb.org that's supposed to be an automated portal for local and state agencies to feed information to, but it is not accessible most of the time and when it is, it often doesn't display any information. The best bets for info are MNICS or www.boreal.org. I"d like to be able to say the StarTribune, which should own this story, but sadly that's not the case. Maybe they can send Lileks up there.
The most current map of the fire is dated yesterday at 1800 hours and lists the fire area at a little over 17,000 acres. However reports from yesterday also had said that it had grown "substantially" from the 16,000 acres reported earlier, so I'm not sure what to think about that (Update: It was 22,000 acres as of this morning and there's an updated map now). If you look at that map, the big concern is the structures within the perimeter that did not burn and the populated area immediately to the east. A prescribed burn has been ordered along FS road 1347 this afternoon(if conditions are right for it) and the roadblock on the Gunflint was moved further east from there.
This morning winds in the area are light and from the SSE. No rain is forecasted. If the winds stay calm and generally from the south they will hopefully make some headway on containment today and any spread will be mainly to unpopulated areas to the north. Also, the Type I Incident team should be in place today and from what I've read there will be close to 500 firefighters on hand. We'll see how it goes. This remains a very dangerous situation for that part of the Gunflint.
BTW-As tough as it is right now at the trail end, the vast majority of the resorts on the Gunflint are open and not at risk currently. If you were planning to visit one of those resorts, check in with them, but don't let the fire change your mind. The community along the trail needs your support more than ever.
(updates on the main page)
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