Byline: Larry Oakes; Warren Wolfe; Staff Writers
Grand Marais, Minn. -- A 10-mile stretch of the Gunflint Trail was evacuated Friday after a small wildfire fanned by hot, dry winds 'blew up' and threatened homes and resorts along the trail.
It was the first time since the mid-1990s that an evacuation has been called along the 60-mile road, which snakes northward from Grand Marais on Lake Superior into the popular Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Cook County Sheriff Mark Falk called for the voluntary evacuation at 1:30 p.m. after the Famine Lake fire neared an evacuation 'trigger point' two-thirds of the way up the trail, between Gunflint Narrows Road on the west and County Road 92 on the east. Authorities blocked the trail on each end of the evacuation area. Authorities allowed some people to travel through the area when visibility was not restricted by smoke.
Joni Kristenson, a Cook County public health nurse, said 132 evacuees checked in at the Cook County Community Center in Grand Marais, but that all made arrangements to stay elsewhere. She said some of the evacuees were tourists and chose to go home while others took advantage of motel rooms offered for free or at a discount by Grand Marais-area innkeepers.
Officials said there have been no injuries.
The Famine Lake fire had burned an area of more than 3 square miles by late Friday - more than 20 times larger than the day before - and was a long, narrow finger moving northward toward the trail, spokesmen for firefighters said. The fire was caused by lightning on Sept. 8.
About 8 miles to the east, a second wildfire - called the Redeye Lake fire - also was moving toward the Gunflint, but at a slower pace, officials said.
Smoke hindered firefighters
Firefighters were battling the Redeye Lake fire with water-dropping airplanes, but intense smoke Friday made it difficult to fight the Famine Lake blaze, said Carson Berglund, a spokesman for the Minnesota Wildfire Information Center in Grand Rapids. The fires were too remote and too dangerous to fight from the ground, he said. A spokesman for Gov. Tim Pawlenty said two National Guard Blackhawk helicopters and their crews were dispatched to the fire on Friday. 'Very windy and dry conditions make this a potentially dangerous situation for residents and visitors along the Gunflint Trail,' Pawlenty said in a prepared statement.
Location is the key
The evacuation was caused by the fire's location and not its size - just a tenth of the area of the Cavity Lake fire that in July came within a half-mile of the northern end of the Gunflint Trail. About 500 firefighters from around the country brought that fire under control.
Evacuation plans were put in place after a huge windstorm in 1999 blew down millions of trees over a large part of the BWCA, leaving behind tons of fuel that could feed wildfires. The Redeye and Famine Lake fires are outside the blowdown area, officials said.
For a time, officials worried that wildfire might sweep across the Gunflint Trail on Friday. The Famine Lake fire was about 3.9 square miles in area and 3 miles from the Gunflint Trail late Friday, Jeff Edmonds, a fire information officer with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, said. The Redeye fire was about 1.5 square miles. Edmonds said authorities called the evacuation even though the flames hadn't yet reached the trigger point agreed upon beforehand. That point was about one mile from the trail.
'I think they thought it was going faster than it was,' Edmonds said. He said the Famine Lake fire 'ran into a spruce swamp and stopped' as nightfall brought calmer winds.
The evacuation area included Gunflint, Loon, Tucker and Marsh lakes. Edmonds said the evacuation was considered voluntary. 'This wasn't even a strong suggestion,' he said. 'It was `it would be a good idea to leave now.'-' He said that there were no immediate plans to lift the evacuation order but that the decision was expected to be reevaluated today.
At the Gunflint Lodge, at the northern end of the evacuation zone, owner Bruce Kerfoot said he asked his 100 guests to leave and closed the lodge for the day. Kerfoot and about 50 employees remained.
Colder weather should help
'The pilots of planes fighting the fire are using the lake near our lodge, and they're telling me the fire is not an immediate threat to the trail,' Kerfoot said late Friday afternoon. 'With some colder and wetter weather in the forecast, I'm pretty optimistic that we won't have a big problem.'
The National Weather Service said temperatures should reach the low 50s today, with a 40 percent chance of rain.
Kerfoot said: 'I think we might be back in business' today.
wolfe@startribune.com - 612-673-7253 loakes@startribune.com - 218-727-7344
SOME HOMES AND RESORTS EVACUATED
Two wildfires are moving north toward the Gunflint Trail, threatening homes and businesses, officials said. The Famine Lake fire, to the west, was the greatest threat because it was larger and moving faster than the Redeye Lake fire, about 8 miles away.
