Sunday, July 30, 2006

Fire update:
Yesterday they moved the containment meter up to 55% and as of 6pm today they made it 65%. They're still saying it's stationary with the occasional flare up. Apparently they're having a hard time with it smoldering in the duff (layer of dry pine needles and whatnot).
They had thunderstorms in the area but didn't get much precipitation today.
There are a bunch of maps online but they're all PDFs and I don't seem to be able to link to those. I found one that shows all of the hotspots that they've found with the infrared detectors. Based on the IR map I'd say that the fire has burned right up to the shore of Little Saganaga all along the northeast side of the lake. I'm pretty sure the "famous" Little Sag campsite with the cliff behind it is right in the middle of that part of the lake. Hard to say how affected the site itself might be but I'm pretty sure there's been fire in the area.
Gabimichigami (NW of Little Sag) looks like it's had about 80% of it's shoreline burned. Ogishkemuncie (NW of Gabi) is only about 20% affected at the northeast end of the lake.

Here's a non-sunset photo of a Beaver taking off. It just looks like sunset because of all the smoke in the air.
The Beavers are US Forest Service planes, they own 3 of them and use them throughout the Superior National Forest, mainly doing forest fire patrols. It was one of these planes that discovered the Cavity Lake fire on July 14th.
They're really cool old airplanes dating back to the 1950s. I've never gotten to ride in one but did get climb around on one at Sawbill once. They were loading up equipment and canoes to go help out some campers that were stranded or injured or something and I helped tie a canoe on top of a pontoon, the pilot let me sit in the cockpit for a minute. It was boss. You can see there's a canoe tied to the plane in this photo, gives you some idea of how big the planes are. The canoe is probably at least 16' long.

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