Firefighters making progress on structure protection

ELY- Since last Sunday’s community wildfire update at Minnesota North-Vermilion attended by more than 350 people, favorable progress was made in the following days, according to statements by St. Louis County Sheriff Gordon Ramsay posted to social media.
“Fire crews made noticeable progress today, especially on the southern edges of the fires in go zones where homes and cabins have been the biggest concern,” Ramsay said Tuesday evening. “The cooler weather and rains gave opportunities to strengthen fire lines and it’s really starting to show. The Forest Service is now talking about real progress at critical areas of the fires.”
Ramsay called the time he spent on Tuesday surveying the work on the Echo Trail “the best part of the last week” as he encountered some of the 780 personnel working the fires.
“I spent time with crews from Mississippi, California, Tennessee, and several other states,” he said. “They were along the Echo Trail cutting timber, clearing brush, widening fire lines, and laying hose around structures. It’s hard, physical work and all I saw was heads down, saws running, brush flying. Nobody was looking for attention.”
That work was in line with the priorities incident command officials described during Sunday’s meeting, where they stressed that while smoky skies had eased temporarily, the region remains in the early stages of what could be a long fire season.
The nearly hour-long briefing on Sunday combined updates on fire growth and behavior with a detailed look at the extensive work firefighters are doing well ahead of the flames to protect homes, businesses and critical infrastructure.
“This is early. This is very early in the season. This is not normal,” fire behavior analyst Arthur Gonzalez told the audience. “There is more fire season ahead of you than there is behind you.”
Operations Section Chief Shane Sturgill said much of the work taking place isn’t directly on the fire’s edge, but well ahead of it.
Along the Echo Trail, crews are clearing vegetation to create defensible corridors while constructing contingency fire lines, installing water handling systems, and preparing alternate locations where firefighters could stop advancing flames if conditions worsen. Aviation resources are cooling hot spots while ground crews follow behind extinguishing remaining heat along fire perimeters.
“Our purpose for that is to decrease the impacts along our fire perimeters, so that helps prevent escape,” Sturgill said. “So we’re using water resources in those areas where a lot of heat is to knock that out, so that limits the chance for escape.”
An equally important part of the operation is protecting structures before fire ever reaches them.
Rather than waiting until flames threaten a structure, firefighters are systematically locating homes, clearing brush and firewood away from buildings, and installing sprinklers and hose systems to improve their chances of surviving if a fire moves through.
That work has proven more challenging than expected because many structures don’t appear on available maps.
“It’s kind of a Easter egg hunt per se,” Sturgill said. “We go out, we look for structures, and we’re finding a lot of those structures that we didn’t know they were there.”
Crews have relied on aerial reconnaissance and local residents to identify additional structures, particularly around Big Lake and along the Echo Trail corridor.
Officials also used the meeting to explain why this year’s fires have behaved so differently from what residents are accustomed to seeing.
Gonzalez said months of unusually dry weather, followed by record heat and roughly 1,000 lightning strikes on July 6, created conditions unlike anything reflected in the area’s recent fire history.
As fuels dried, fires began spreading rapidly, not as a continuous wall of flames but by throwing embers far ahead of the main fire.
“As these trees are burning, they’re sending hot embers out ahead. So they’re seeing spot fires a mile ahead of the fire,” Gonzalez said. “This is leapfrogging.”
Those spot fires were able to ignite vegetation across lakes that normally would slow a wildfire’s advance. Gonzalez said the Bear Trap Fire expanded roughly 10 miles over three days as winds shifted, with fires repeatedly “island hopping” across the Boundary Waters landscape.
Although recent rainfall has moderated fire behavior, Gonzalez cautioned that much of the fire continues burning underground in deep organic soils, where it can remain active until firefighters physically dig out the remaining heat.
Weather remains the biggest uncertainty heading into the week, incident meteorologist Kari Fleegel said.
“If we get some rain, that’s beneficial in the very, very short term,” Fleegel said. “But as you know, we have a lot of summer ahead of us. We have a lot of drying ahead of us.”
Monday and Tuesday expected to bring sustained gusty west and northwest winds before drier conditions settle in later in the week.
The fires are already taking a significant economic toll on Ely.
Tanner Spicer, president of the Ely Chamber of Commerce, said the Blueberry/Art Festival, which typically draws tens of thousands of visitors, was cancelled because nearby neighborhoods remain under evacuation orders and emergency resources are stretched by the ongoing fires.
“We knew the impact it was going to have on the community was going to be astronomical, but we also had to weigh the risks with it,” Spicer said. “There’s a big difference between having 40,000 people come into town and having people here and there stop in and shop at our shops, eat at our restaurants, stay in our establishments.”
Spicer emphasized that while the festival was cancelled, Ely itself remains open for visitors. The chamber is already working with state legislators and economic development agencies to pursue assistance for affected businesses while continuing plans for September’s Harvest Moon Festival.
BWCAW planning
On Sunday, Superior National Forest Supervisor Tom Hall acknowledged the hardships caused by the fires, particularly the closure of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
“We did not take that lightly,” Hall said. “We do not want to keep the Boundary Waters closed. That is a huge impact to your community and all the other communities that rely on that for that economic driver.”
Hall said firefighters are beginning to make progress as additional national resources arrive in Minnesota, and he praised the cooperation among local agencies and communities throughout the region.
He specifically thanked Ely, Cook, and Orr for hosting firefighters and incident management teams, along with the work of the Lake and St. Louis county sheriff’s offices in managing evacuations and road closures.
And on Tuesday, Hall told MPR News that the Forest Service is considering a partial reopening on the eastern side of the BWCAW.
“We’re definitely looking at where can we open that up, whether that’s day trips or whether that’s a section [of the BWCAW],” he said. “Any of that is going to take some level of signing within the Boundary Waters of what is closed and what is open, and so it’s going to take some work for us to get there.”
But he added they’re still concerned about the possibility of new fires starting.
Meanwhile, Incident Commander Kyle Smith closed Sunday’s meeting by encouraging residents to think ahead about what they would need if an evacuation ever became necessary.
“There’s nothing wrong with going ahead and getting things ready before you ever get put in that ready category,” Smith said.
He encouraged residents to prepare before conditions require immediate action, saying it’s easier to make those decisions in advance than under the pressure of an evacuation.