posted
While motorcycling at the cabin this weekend we rode into an active/smoldering forest fire. Before we figured it out a helicopter spotted us and radioed a 4wheeler to ask us to leave. It was contained and only damaged about 140 arces.
Our cabin is about 2 miles south of Lost Lake on the map. Was strange to see all the heavy equipment out in the middle of nowhere. At one point while trying to find an alternate route around the fire - we were flying down a trail and I almost ran into a oncoming D6 Dozer widening a trail.
Fire in Grand Portage State Forest in northeast Minnesota is contained James Stephens Star Tribune
Published Jul 5, 2002 More than 100 firefighters battled a wildfire Thursday in the Grand Portage State Forest between Hovland and Grand Marais after strong winds Wednesday afternoon fed its growth from 80 to 400 acres -- and moved it dangerously close to the blow-down area of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA).
U.S. Forest Service spokesman Marty Christensen said, "We've brought all of the resources that are feasible to knock this thing down. The fire is contained, but not controlled." He said it was burning about 11 miles northeast of Grand Marais and 10 miles northwest of Hovland.
Christensen said 125 firefighters were able to contain the fire Thursday by plowing a dirt road around it. Wednesday's strong winds had diminished, and on Thursday the winds turned the fire back on itself.
Nonetheless, fire officials took several precautions to contain the fire. The Hovland Fire Department dispatched equipment Wednesday to protect a cabin less than a mile from the southern edge of the fire because of high winds, Christensen said.
More than 70 firefighters on the ground were assisted by three air tankers, four helicopters, five bulldozers, seven fire engines and nine all-terrain water delivery vehicles.
Firefighters worked to control the fire Thursday. Late Thursday evening, Christensen said, "There is some fire inside, but it's not going to go anywhere." Although the fire was within a couple of miles of the Superior Hiking Trail, "it's not even an issue now," he said.
Christensen said the fire was discovered Tuesday by routine air surveillance. Lightning caused the fire, which started in an area of pine trees and logging slash. He said that although there aren't any restrictions on burning, the area where the fire began was "dry right in that area. It's a band of state land that received very little rain."
Thursday marked the third anniversary of a fierce windstorm in the 1.1-million-acre BWCA. On July 4, 1999, a 40-mile swath of wilderness, approximately 140,000 acres, was stripped of millions of trees, leaving the area especially vulnerable to fires.
'There's no danger of the fire spreading," Christensen said, "There's a line around it, and we are working on the control stage. And that's the next step on controlling it until it's out."
-- James Stephens is at jstephens
Posts: 5484 | From: St. Paul, Mn | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
That's pretty close. Did you happen to see any areas that the fire had moved though? It would be interesting to see how much damage it caused. That area hasn't been as dry for as long as SD has. Even in an average year pine trees are pretty flamable. I bet they are EXPLOSIVELY combustible in the Black Hills and some probably went up like the Space Shuttle taking off.
Posts: 620 | Registered: Oct 2000
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posted
It was wide open and BLACK everywhere. A lot of that area was old logging slash that probably went up like a tinderbox. Other than that, it was mostly post-logging regrowth forest which is usually a mixture of evergreen and deciduous. The forests up there don't get anywhere near as dry and explosive as a solid pine forest like the Black Hills.
posted
Not the case with the Hovland fire but a good article.
By ROBERT GEHRKE, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Nearly half the projects designed to reduce fire risks in national forests since 2001 were stalled by appeals, usually by environmentalists seeking to stop logging, an internal Forest Service report says.
Critics say the delays left forests overgrown, contributing to the worst fire year on record in the West, where more than 3.1 million acres have burned so far.
The report said that of 326 cases in the past two years in which the service planned to cut down excess small trees that could fuel forest fires, 155 were delayed by administrative appeals and 21 of those cases ended up in court.
"Any way you cut it this is a pretty high rate of appeals," Mark Rey, the Agriculture Department undersecretary who oversees the Forest Service, said Tuesday.
In the northern Rocky Mountain states, all 53 planned projects were appealed, the report said.
"These numbers are a scathing indictment of the process that governs management of the nation's forests, and a harsh reminder of just how relentlessly ideological some environmental litigants have become," said Rep. Scott McInnis ( news, bio, voting record), R-Colo.
"If ever there were a case for reforming the arcane and litigious way in which we manage our forests, this emphatically is it."
McInnis' House Resources forests subcommittee has scheduled a hearing Thursday on forest management.
The report did not include controlled burns and other small, noncontroversial projects. Kieren Suckling, executive director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said those were deliberately left out to skew the figures.
Suckling said his group supports legitimate forest thinning, but draws the line when the Forest Service wants to conduct timber sales, removing large-diameter trees to appease the timber industry. He said those logging projects actually increase the fire danger.
"If the Forest Service would stick to the thinning of small trees they won't get opposition and they'll be able to get the work done, but when they go after the old growth they run into a brick wall of public opposition," Suckling said.
Rey said the Bush administration is working with Congress to reduce red tape in launching treatment projects.
"The thinning of these overdense stands has got to be our top priority if we're ever going to change the fire situation we find ourselves in, where fires are burning in an unnatural way - too intense, too catastrophic," he said.
However, the environmental community prevails in half of its appeals, and eliminating opportunities for challenges will allow the Forest Service to continue damaging, ill-conceived projects, Suckling said.
Posts: 5484 | From: St. Paul, Mn | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:Originally posted by P_McCracken: It would be interesting to see how much damage it caused.
Next time you guys are up to the cabin we will take you on a tour of the destruction. We found a trail that brings you up to the top of a rocky cliff a couple miles from the burned area. It's overlooking the helicopter pad they dozed for fighting fires.
Posts: 5484 | From: St. Paul, Mn | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I know I'll prob get blasted just for commenting on that article, but what the hell.
Know doubt that the overzealous extremist environmentalists bog down the process constantly, manytimes based on misrepresented or inaccurate information and claims. But the majority of Timber & paper/pulp industries do not have a good track records when it comes to "thining" stand. Plane and simple they don't really want small trees, or deadfall (with a few exceptions of extremely valuable deadfall like oldgrowth cedar) They have a tendancy to clearcut when they have the opportunity to enter and area. The amount of oversite monitoring timber harvests is minimal at best, and fines or violations of permit regs are sometimes very hard to enforce. True selective cuts are good for forests, as are fires. All of these systems in the west are fire dependent. The problems in the west are only minimally related to lack of Timber harvesting. Its the result of 100yrs of fire suppresion, and its gonna take more than a few high fire years to take care of it all. Compound that with the 4th consecutive year of Record drought in places like the colorado, and no amount of logging would take care of the whole issue.
The timber industry is not exactly falling apart. Most of the successful and responsible timber companies use a lot of private land for resources and are not that impacted by public land timber.
What needs to be done is responsible thining utilizing specific planning for long term management. In addition once the overall process of thining occurs small understory fires need to be allowed to occur & and even started in certain conditions.
Look at Yellowstone, with regards to the big fire at the begining of the 90's, the vegetation and forests haven't been healthier in 150yrs. (unfortunatly this isn't true of the Park Services big game management in Yellowstone)
I'll get down off my soapbox now
Posts: 2469 | From: Anchorage, AK | Registered: Oct 2001
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