ELY – As another spring wildfire season looms in the next few weeks, the Ely area is looking back at the tenth anniversary of the Pagami Creek Fire and the lessons learned from that devastating event, as forest management evolves through the use of prescribed burn techniques.
A series of free events, sponsored by Dovetail Partners and Minnesota Firewise organizations, in cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service, is continuing here this month to inform and educate those who make their home and livelihood here about how to live with wildfire in the North Country.
Fire professionals gathered with the public last week to present an overview of the Pagami Creek Fire to give a firsthand account of working the fire line, and they discussed managing the fire (closures, evacuations, public safety), as well as how the USFS currently applies lessons learned.
Last Saturday, fire professionals discussed what prescribed fire is and how the USFS plans for it, taking into account weather and smoke management, communication strategies, and tools and techniques used in prescribed fire operations.
The USFS is planning to conduct thousands of acres of prescribed burns in 2022 all around the Ely area. Nick Petrack, USFS Superior National Forest West Zone Fire Management Officer, explained that the planning phase to identify possible locations for planned burns this spring is wrapping up.
While this week’s continuing snowfall may not look much like spring, wildfire season could start in earnest within weeks.
“The biggest thing with prescribed fire is flexibility and adaptability” Petrak said. “We need to make sure we have a wide variety of prescribed fires, including what we call burning and slash. We might be burning for grass (reduction), burning for habitat, reforestation, or hazardous fuels.”
“We take into account the varied weather up here,” he continued. “On any given day it might be raining in Virginia. It might be sunny here in Ely. And it’s always cold in Embarrass.”
The USFS West Zone Fire District encompasses an area from Chisholm to Lake Superior and from the Boundary Waters south to the Duluth area, he said. “Within this area there are about two dozen county fire departments, three different Department of Natural Resources offices, as well as Voyageurs National Park,” Petrack said.
“We are working on our 2022 plan and are doing our best to include what we plan on doing. We want to be very transparent to the public,” he said. “Some burns are in the final stages, some are in the middle stages and some are in the beginning stages.”
Prescribed burns in the North Country are planned to begin as soon as the snow leaves and continue until the first autumn snowfall.
“We did a lot of burning last season up in the Ely area, and there were many high-priority areas here. We worked as a zone so there were many partners here, including the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the DNR,” he said. “We pooled our resources to get more bang for the buck.”
Petrack said burning will be conducted this year in the Kangas Unit near Little Lake Rd. and Birch Lake areas. In addition, areas north of Orr and in the Echo Trail area, referred to as the Oak/Blueberry Prescribed Burn Units will also be targeted this year. “We want to do a lot of burning in the Echo Trail area,” he said.
North of Virginia, a 700-acre timber harvest area that has been active for about six years is near completion, according to Petrack.
“We want to go in there and do a lot of fuels reduction treatment in this very populated part of the forest,” he said.
Moving clockwise around Ely, an area near Aurora and another near Bear Island Lake are also in the 2022 prescribed burn plan, along with small areas near Perch and Whisper lakes southeast of Ely.
“We probably have 8,000 acres of area planned to burn,” Petrack said. Since last October, some 1,500 acres of wood in burn piles have been cleared, he added.
“We are looking at starting to implement prescribed burns from the end of April through the first week of June. That is typical of prescribed burn season. More information will come out as we get closer to these dates.”
Why burn on purpose?
Petrack described the reasoning behind the prescribed burning process.
“Fire is a natural part of the ecosystem” he said. “It is not a matter of if we burn, it is a matter of when we burn. The habitat of the north woods, including the ecosystem that includes wildlife and humans, is another reason why we burn.”
He continued, “Protection of the public and safeguarding those who live here is a big reason why we have prescribed fires. A lot of the fuel-reduction burns are developed strategically to protect the public. As we enter 2022, more and more, everybody wants to live in the woods. We do what we can to develop projects to safeguard the public.”
He said that preferred methods are developed for each of the areas that are to be protected. “We have a variety of methods, including mechanical thinning. We might come and burn to prepare an area for new growth. We look at protecting the public and habitat, or reforestation of a harvested area, all sorts of things,” he said.
An ongoing concern in the forest is balsam removal.
“This is very prevalent in our landscape up here,” Petrack said. “It is very flammable and we are constantly trying to reduce balsam in strategic locations. As firefighters we don’t want to see balsam trees growing right up to someone’s property. It is very challenging to suppress balsam fires.”
He noted that oftentimes, multiple prescribed burns may be needed to mitigate certain areas and landscapes.
“As the public, you might ask why the same area is burned again three years later,” he said. “I tell our firefighters that they are ignition crews and not magician crews. It may take a few intervals to get that site prepared to meet our long-term objectives. We might have a low intensity burn in a certain area one year and come back with a high intensity burn the next year, or vice versa. There is a science behind it. There is a prescription developed for the area.”