THE BOUNDARY WATERS— One of the hallmarks of a federal wilderness is a landscape governed by natural, rather than man-made processes. Here, in the 1.1-million-acre Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, fire has long played a critical natural role in shaping the boreal forest ecosystem still found in the region today.
While allowing fire to play its part in the wilderness is a goal of the forest plan that governs management on the Superior National Forest, many factors weigh in to the decision on whether to allow a natural fire to continue to burn.
To help guide such decisions, the Forest Service has devised what’s known as the Incident Strategic Alignment Process, or ISAP, a relatively new framework for considering risk and developing strategies for managing wildfire incidents. During the recent Horse River Fire, officials on the Superior made use of the ISAP in ultimately deciding to control the fire after it had smoldered for nearly two weeks, growing to about 13 acres during that time.
The fire started May 22 after lightning struck a white pine on a ridge in a remote part of the BWCAW, east of the Horse River. Like many such incidents, the fire in this case spread slowly for days, mostly burning downward into duff layers rather than spreading outward.
In some ways, the fire might have been an ideal candidate to allow to continue burning, since it was relatively remote from travel routes and fire danger, while elevated, was certainly lessened by the recent forest green-up.
But several factors weighed against each other, as the fire management team used the ISAP tool to come to the decision to control the fire, a decision ultimately made by Tom Hall, the Superior’s forest supervisor.
“It’s kind of a tough balancing act,” said Steve Long, a public information officer who works on fire management teams. According to Long, the management team evaluated several possible alternatives, including allowing the fire to continue to burn. Looking at the landscape in the vicinity, fire officials determined that the fire could grow as large as 4,000 acres before it would likely bump up against Basswood Lake.
And had it been September, that’s the option fire officials might have chosen, said Long, who notes that the recreational season had just gotten underway and a large and sustained fire in the vicinity of busy central travel routes, potentially burning or smoking for weeks or months, would have been unwelcome for many and likely led to numerous campsite and portage closings. “What is the economic cost to outfitters, and other businesses that make their livelihood off wilderness visitors?” asked Long.
The safety of the public, firefighters, and other wilderness personnel was also a top consideration said Long. In the wake of the 2011 Pagami Creek Fire, fire officials are well aware that fires can smolder for weeks before conditions allow them to explode, potentially putting lives at risk and raising the cost of firefighting operations.
In the end, notes Kawishiwi District Ranger Aaron Kania, Mother Nature largely decided the issue. The Horse River Fire essentially self-extinguished,” said Kania. That’s actually a far more likely outcome with most lightning strike fires than a major blaze.
Difficult work
Fighting a lightning fire in the Boundary Waters, even a small one like the Horse River Fire, can be challenging given that such fires can occur anywhere, sometimes miles from the nearest canoe route. And with firefighting efforts limited to hand tools in most cases, the work can be tough as firefighters often need to dig down, sometimes as much as a foot, into the duff layer to root out and drown hot spots. While a fire can seem to be extinguished at times, there are often hot spots down in the duff or inside dead stumps or roots, that can smolder for days or weeks until dry and windy weather fans them back into an active burn.
To fully control a wildfire, firefighters need to locate all of those hot spots and extinguish them by exposing the hot embers and dousing them with water. It can be an enormous task even on a relatively small fire.
The Forest Service has developed small teams, called “modules,” comprised of specialized firefighters who can be deployed quickly to remote locations to handle such incidents.
In the case of the Horse River Fire, said Long, the Forest Service sent in two modules after members of the two teams had gone through a day of canoe training. A helicopter dropped in a two-week supply of food and Starlink provided them a satellite connection so they could communicate face-to-face on a daily basis with the fire management team. The firefighters now also deploy other types of technology, including drones with thermal imaging to help them locate underground hot spots. In the past, firefighters typically had to watch for “smokes,” typically just small trails of smoke associated with an underground hot spot. Firefighters also relied on their bare or gloved hands to feel for warm spots at the surface that could reveal something burning underground.
With that work now complete on the Horse River Fire, the blaze is now considered 100-percent contained.