A strong contingent of home-grown Minnesota fire engines and their crews heading home after nearly two weeks of fighting fire in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW).
The engines were called to the incident as part of Minnesota's mutual aid agreements between fire departments across the state. The agreements proved their worth--saving more than $42.1 million in structures along the Gunflint Trail.
The engines and their crews are now demobilized from the Ham Lake fire as containment fire is reached. While mostly overshadowed by the massive Type 1 incident management team operation, the local engines were some of the first to arrive on the scene to assess the situation, determine needs and priorities, and protect those homes and structures they could by setting up sprinkler systems and spraying foam on and around the structures.
The structural protection efforts on the fire included both structural and wildland fire engines and personnel. In the early hours of the fire the Gunflint Volunteer Fire Department called in engines from the Cook County mutual aid agreement when the fire first threatened homes and businesses along the Gunflint Trail. Eight of the nine Cook County fire departments responded to that initial call on Sunday, May 6, when less than 24 hours after ignition, the fire began to threaten the Gunflint Trail corridor and evacuations were ordered.
The Minnesota State Fire Chief’s Association in conjunction with the Minnesota State Fire Marshal's Office called in additional resources, when the fire started heading back toward the trail four days later.
The Minnesota engines were called in from a couple dozen fire departments across the state, including the Anoka-Champlin, Aurora, Biwabik, Bloomington, Canosia, Colvill, Elk River, Esko, Forest Lake, Grand Lake, Grand Marais, Hovland, Lakeland, Lakeville, Lakewood, Lindstrom, Linwood, Lutsen, Maple Hill, Minneapolis, Oakdale, Onamia, Palo, Ramsey, Rush City, Solway, St. Louis Park, Tofte and Zimmerman.
In the midst of a fire that would eventually grow to more than 36,000 acres in the United States (more than 75,000 acres total, including Canada), these structural engine crews managed to save 759 buildings along the Gunflint corridor, worth an estimated $42.1 million in market value.
While 140 structures were ultimately lost to the blaze, that number could have been much higher had the Gunflint Volunteer Fire Department not called the Minnesota State Fire Marshal's Office to mobilize additional resources as quickly as it did.
Other resources were called in from 28 states and Canada to help with the Ham Lake effort, including fire fighters, aircraft, mobile food and shower units, communications equipment, and an overhead team.
Gunflint Volunteers Rise to the Challenge
Some of the first engines responding to the fire were from the Gunflint Volunteer Fire Department, which was started in 1992 after the Windigo Lodge fire in 1991 killed seven people. The Department was front and center on structural protection efforts during the Ham Lake fire, assisting the Cook County Sheriff with evacuating some 300 people from the Gunflint corridor.
Rising from the original Gunflint Fire Rescue and Ambulance Service of the 1980s, the all-volunteer department had to learn how to provide their own structural protection in an area surrounded by wilderness and more than 60 miles from the next-closest fire department. Working with various federal, state, and county agencies, the volunteers learned to equip and train themselves, to provide for defensible space around structures, and to handle water for fire protection and suppression.
The Gunflint Department—now 30 volunteers strong and equipped with five engines, an ambulance and supply truck—was instrumental in preparing the Gunflint corridor for a fire like this one in the years following the 1999 blowdown. The department has helped home and business owners install and maintain sprinkler systems, create evacuation plans, and train its volunteer firefighters to fight fire along the wildland-urban interface.
The department has had some unique challenges along the way. Chief among those challenges is geography: the department covers a huge geographic area, some 60-plus miles along the Gunflint Trail. When the department organized in the early 1990s, the communications systems along the trail were so primitive that the volunteers used calling trees to round up volunteers when a fire call came in. The department also suffered a setback in 2000, when fire destroyed one fire hall and the engines and equipment inside.
As a result of steady tax-based income, grant-writing and volunteer tenacity, today the Gunflint Volunteer Department is now better equipped to rise to challenges like the Ham Lake Fire, according to Fire Chief Dan Baumann. The department has a radio communications system, a command structure, and three fire halls to coordinate the volunteer effort across its massive district.
"I'm very proud to say that this department has really dedicated people that get the training they need to keep up to date, and we work really well together," said Baumann. "This fire was a test of all our training. It was not a textbook fire because it involved wildland and structures and was a moving target. Some of our guys stayed with engines around the clock to keep pumping on structures."
With the structural threat diminished, the Gunflint volunteer firefighters will now turn their attention to helping neighbors and friends clean up and rebuild where their valiant efforts were overwhelmed.
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