More Fires

We had a thunderstorm move through late Thursday night which brough some rain and lightning. The rain varied from .03 to .37. So, yesterday afternoon the detection started picking up fires. Four last night on the forest two of which were on our zone. The Redeye fire, which is on the Gunflint district is about a 1/4 acre. Real difficult access so we are monitoring it from the air as of right now. We used the Beaver to drop water on it last night and again this morning. I flew it early this morning. It was a great morning to be up in the air even though it was a little bumpy. The air is so dry we can see for about 50 miles.

The other fire on the zone is on the Tofte district, which is where Theresa works. She sent me a couple photos from her flight last night. The Famine fire as we are calling it is also really poor access so it's another one to monitor from the air. I don't understand why lightning won't strike somewhere that we can actually get to?? Anyway, the famine fire was also about a 1/4 acre yesterday. They didn't put any water on it at all so the Beaver just called in about an hour ago and it had doubled in size. Still not a big deal. It is burning in hardwoods and is surrounded by swamp. They are using a confine stategy which means we will confine it to a certain area. In this case it will be confined to natural barriers (lakes, swamps and rivers). If it starts to pick up a head of steam I'm sure they will hit it with airtankers. After spending almost 12 million dollars on the Cavity Lake fire we will barely even feel the costs of these little guys.

Now today the forest has had quite a few more fires. All are on the west side which got more lightning then we did. All of these fires have been around a 1/4 acre in size and just smoldering around with little open flame. Things are so dry right now that the fires are burning deep and extremely hard to put out.

Over the past hour things have gotten really busy. The west side of the forest is running out of resources trying to staff the current fires and keep a small crew for new ones. Lots of people out of state right now so it will tight around here for a few more days.....