Sunday, May 13, 2007

OK, so here are some thoughts about the fire.
Thursday gets the award for worst day so far. The fire grew from 22,000 acres to ~55,000. It was hot, dry and windy. Most of that expansion was in Canada, across the north side of Gunflint lake. It traveled around 13 miles that day and was advancing at more than 1 mph for much of the day. One firefighting official said 80% of the airborne embers blowing ahead of the fire were starting their own fires. Not sure how scientific that is but it's interesting.
Friday morning when I got to work and opened the car door i could smell smoke. I thought that smells like a fire, I wonder if it could be from the fire? Then I decided that was impossible. Later that afternoon the NPR weather guy was saying that the fire was "smellable" all over this part of the state and over in Eau Claire Wisconsin as well. We're ~250 miles away from where the fire is.
All BWCA entry points from Sawbill east to the end of the Gunflint trail are closed.
The fire is about 15 miles from Sawbill and from our property. Another bad day like last Thursday could put the fire very close to either location. The general trend seems to be for it to expand to the north and east, if that trend holds up it won't get significantly closer to either of us.
Since Thursday the weather has been relatively cooperative albeit without any rain. Tonight there is an 80% chance of scattered thundershowers, hopefully it'll be heavy on the showers and light on the thunder. It's dry enough up there that lightening could start a lot of other fires.
There are close to 700 people fighting the fire, that number has been going up by about 100 a day for the past several days.
Containment is now 15%, not good but much better than the 5% they were announcing all last week. I think if they get some rain tonight the percentage could jump up quickly.
There have been 133 structures destroyed, 61 residences and 17 businesses, the rest were "outbuildings".
It seems like every time they talk to a firefighter on the radio they talk about these rooftop sprinkler systems that lots of people up there have. Apparently they're very effective, here's a photo I found of one in action:

Here's another interesting shot I found:

I can't think of much else to write now.

1 comment:

Carrie and Rob said...

That canoe picture is really cool... sad, but cool.