ELY- Evacuation efforts expanded across portions of Lake and St. Louis counties on Tuesday as rapidly growing wildfires forced residents and visitors from areas surrounding Ely and prompted the precautionary relocation of about 500 people associated with Scouting America’s Northern Tier High Adventure program.
The Babbitt Municipal Center opened as the official evacuation site for those displaced by the fires, while nearly 400 Scouts and adult leaders were transported to Camp Wilderness near Park Rapids.
The evacuations followed several days of extreme heat and low humidity that fueled rapid growth among fires sparked by lightning July 6. Superior National Forest officials reported 21 fire starts from the storm, including 14 within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
All BWCAW entry points were closed beginning at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday as firefighters continued responding to fires across the wilderness and surrounding national forest.
The Camp Fire, estimated at over 2,800 acres Tuesday, prompted the first major evacuation order. Located about five miles north of Winton, the fire spread approximately 4.5 miles during part of Monday.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office, working with the U.S. Forest Service, ordered an immediate evacuation beginning at 7 a.m. Tuesday along the Hwy. 16, or Fernberg Road, corridor. The order included adjoining roads, driveways, and trails from Lake One and Snowbank Lake west to the Garden Lake Bridge.
The area was placed under a “go” evacuation status, and deputies began conducting door-to-door notifications.
At about 11:30 a.m., Lake County expanded the evacuation area to include the North Fall Lake 2A sector. The evacuation readiness area extended closer to Winton, although the community itself was not included.
Echo Trail evacuations
Evacuations expanded into St. Louis County at about 1:30 p.m., when the sheriff’s office ordered people to leave a section of the Echo Trail between Big Lake and Jeanette Lake.
The sheriff’s office expanded the number of areas subject to an evacuation order on Wednesday morning. The easternmost addition is a zone northwest and adjacent to a previously evacuated zone connected to the Camp Fire.
The Echo Trail evacuation area, which extended to near Big Lake on the east on Tuesday, was expanded to three zones surrounding Big Lake. On the west side, two additional zones were added south of the Echo Trail, roughly following Forest Rd. 200 southwest to the Vermilion River and the extreme north shore of Oriniack Lake.
Those evacuations were primarily prompted by the Sioux Fire, which was estimated at 3,500 acres as of Tuesday. The fire is north of the Echo Trail and east of the Jeanette Lake campground, outside the BWCAW.
“The Sioux Fire moved south causing closure of the Echo Trail from Big Lake on the east end to 200 on the west,” the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office reported Tuesday evening. “The Sioux fire had moderate growth today.”
Officials were also monitoring the Wolf Pack Fire immediately west of the Sioux Fire.
“The Wolf Pack is just to the west of the Sioux Fire and is moving parallel to the Sioux Fire,” the sheriff’s office reported. “The Wolf Pack fire had rapid growth today and might merge with the Sioux Fire tomorrow (which it did on Wednesday).”
No additional evacuation areas had been announced as of early Wednesday morning.
Northern Tier
evacuation
Among Tuesday’s largest evacuation operations was the removal of Scouts, leaders, volunteers, and staff from Northern Tier’s Ely base on Moose Lake, about 20 miles northeast of Ely.
Northern Tier facilitates wilderness trips for approximately 4,000 Scouts annually. The organization announced shortly before 8 a.m. Tuesday that an orderly evacuation of the base and crews in the wilderness was underway.
Northern Tier described the move as precautionary and said there was no immediate threat to Scouts, volunteers, or staff. The decision was based on current fire behavior, weather conditions, and forecasts indicating that evacuation was the safest option.
Northern Tier staff worked with the St. Louis and Lake county sheriff’s offices, emergency management officials, the Forest Service, and other agencies to account for crews still in the wilderness and communicate evacuation procedures to group leaders.
The Ely School District provided buses and drivers to assist with transportation, and Ely High School served as a staging point where evacuees could be transferred to other locations.
About 500 Scouts, leaders, volunteers, and staff were involved in the evacuation, according to a Northern Tier official interviewed by WDIO. Camp Wilderness near Park Rapids reported that it was housing nearly 400 of the displaced Scouts and adult leaders.
Visitors remain in wilderness
Removing visitors from elsewhere in the BWCAW is expected to be a much longer operation.
Evacuation efforts began with a partial closure of the wilderness last Friday. Eight rangers, traveling as four two-person canoe teams, began paddling through the BWCAW to notify campers and other visitors that they needed to leave.
Officials estimated it could take a week to reach the wilderness’s approximately 2,000 campsites. Superior National Forest Fire Management Officer Nick Petrack said floatplanes could be used if visitors faced an imminent threat.
St. Louis County Sheriff Gordon Ramsay said late Monday that several people near the Camp Fire had already been rescued by boat and aircraft.
Babbitt opens
evacuation site
The Babbitt Municipal Center opened Tuesday morning as the official public evacuation site. The center slowly began seeing a few evacuees, although the number of people who sought assistance there Tuesday was not immediately available. It remained open until 9 p.m. to help displaced residents and visitors.
Representatives of the American Red Cross and St. Louis County Public Health were on hand, along with local staff and volunteers. Those working at the center were helping those who came obtain food, temporary housing, and other resources.
The heart of Babbitt was on full display on Tuesday when volunteer Sheri Israel put up a post saying that she and her husband Chris were planning a Wednesday evening cookout at the community center for those displaced by the fires. The response from the community was overwhelming, Israel said.
“My husband and I, our love language is food, and so we thought let’s grill for these folks who need to come to the center,” Israel said. We had a huge group reach out – I was texting people for two hours straight,” she said.
Jim Zupancich donated meat, buns, and chips, Israel said. Offers to provide the remaining food and supplies quickly filled the organizers’ requests beyond what they anticipated.
But on Wednesday morning, Israel was faced with a common dilemma that people often face when donating items to fire relief efforts – where are the people who they had intended to help?
“My husband is on the recreation board here and he went last night to the meeting (at the municipal center) and he said nobody was there,” Israel said.
Israel reported on Wednesday that all of the donated food would be brought to Veterans on the Lake, which is also assisting evacuees.
Residents can monitor St. Louis County’s “Ready, Set, Go” evacuation map at sheriff-slcgis.hub.arcgis.com/pages/wildfire. The site also shows affected areas in Lake County and provides a link to that county’s emergency notification information.