Ham Lake Fire - Part 1

Today is the tenth anniversary of the start of the Ham Lake Fire.  I plan to write a series of articles about it over the next two and a half weeks.  This article will focus on what happened in the first few days of the fire.

I spotted the plume of smoke at about 11:30 AM on May 5, 2007.  It was visible from the Gunflint Horse Stables several miles away from the ignition point at Ham Lake.  The day was warm, dry, and very windy.  I decided to forget about my horse ride, and traveled over to the Cross River Landing on the Round Lake Road, where there was already heavy smoke and ashes falling from the sky.  I called it in on the fire radio to Cook County Dispatch (which at least one person had already done).

Shortly after getting dropped off at Gunflint by the person who had driven me to the landing, the Gunflint Trial Volunteer Fire Department was paged out.  I responded in Engine 573 to the junction of the Round Lake Road and the Gunflint Trail.  When I got there, Mike Prom, our Assistant Chief, had taken Incident Command.  He and Don had responded in Engine 583.  The residents of the Round Lake Road were being quickly evacuated, and our leaders worked out a plan.

GTVFD Engine 2526 (formerly 573)

Soon, engines from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and the United States Forest Service, along with our Engine 563 arrived at the staging point as well.  Several aircraft were also working the fire by that time.  One of the Forest Service firefighters assumed incident command.

The first priority in any fire is human lives.  There were two portages from Ham Lake to get back to the Cross River Landing, both of which were engulfed in flames.  The only way to get in there by land was an obscure path that I knew of, that was not on any maps.  Armed with that knowledge, I was attached to a two man Forest Service crew to bring them into Ham Lake, and evacuate the occupants.

Ham Lake Ski Trail
This was taken on April 30, 2017.  I did not have time to take pictures during the Ham Lake Fire until April 9, 2017, four days into the incident.

This is entrance to the still unnamed trail off of the ski trail.

This is going down the unnamed trail.  It was bone dry when the Ham Lake Fire started.

Here the trail narrows again about 100 yards from Ham Lake.

This is the trail right before Ham Lake.  It was slippery a few days ago, but dry on May 5, 2007.

We drove up the Ham Lake Ski Trail, and hiked in the back trail from there.  When we arrived at Ham Lake, there were 1 foot tall waves, and strong winds.  Ham Lake is a small lake, and rarely has waves of that size.

This picture of Ham Lake was taken on April 30, 2017 from the furthest campsite from the site of the blaze.  On May 5, 2007, we were able to see the fire when looking in this direction.

Aircraft were flying low overhead trying to knock down the fire at the head.  I remember specifically CL-215's dropping water, and a P-3 Orion dropping red powdered fire retardant.  There were probably Beaver aircraft up there as well, but by that time (since they can only drop 100 gallon of water), they would have been used as spotter aircraft.

The first two campsites we came to did not have any occupants, but the peninsula site did have a Forest Service crew on it.  Ironically, they were up here for a clean air conference.  The fire was going in the opposite direction, so they decided to stay put until they found a way out.

I paddled with one of the firefighters up to the camp site at the heal of the fire.  There were several burning spots on the campsite, and the fire had hopped over the Cross River, which exits the lake at that spot.  The fire quickly spread downwind of that point.  However, the only spot on Ham Lake to burn was that campsite and a tiny bit of the shore across the river.  Fires are named after their point of origin, but not necessarily their area of worst damage.

We searched the other bays in the lake, and did not find the person who started the fire.  The Forest Service crew on the peninsula campsite had seen him close enough for a positive identification, but he was nowhere to be found.  He made his own way out later that day.

The person who started the fire had been coming to that site for many years.  He liked paddling out there as soon as the ice went out.  From everything I have read, and everything I have heard from the people who knew him, he did NOT start this fire on purpose.

After closing the site where the fire started, we returned to the peninsula site, and helped get everyone (and their equipment) out.  We were met on the King's Road by one of the outfitters vehicles, and completed the evacuation.

Soon, I was back with the rest of the Gunflint Trail VFD at Tuscarora Lodge.  We were helping to put up sprinklers, and putting out fires on the shores.  I remember seeing and hearing the fir trees torching very close to us.  There was a whoosh and a cracking sound, and a whole 60 foot tall tree would be engulfed in 3 - 5 seconds.  Aircraft came in and dumped water on them.  Otherwise, we would have had to retreat.

That night, most of the firefighters went home to get some rest.  They chose the youngest person on the department, and the freshest person (Dan F.) to take the night watch of the Round Lake Road.  I was the youngest at the time.  We were told to watch over the Round Lake Road and call if any more structures were in danger.

We spent the night patrolling the area with Engine 573, and putting out fires as we found them.  By morning, we could see the fire had moved well beyond the Round Lake Road, and was headed for the Seagull Lake area.  We were relieved at 6:30 AM, and I went home to get some rest.


May 6, 2007:

Before going to sleep, I had a bowl of oatmeal, which is all I had the day before as well.  It was a good thing I ate at that time, because at approximately 10:30 AM, we got paged out again to evacuate the end of the Gunflint Trail.  I had gotten only about 3 1/2 hours of sleep, and did not have a chance to eat again before returning to duty.  Later that day, I asked one of the other members of the GTVFD (Sue) if I could buy some food from her, and she just said I could just have some.  Shortly after that, a truck arrived with snacks.

I learned some lessons about wildfires and food in those first days of the fire.  Always have some flavoring for the oatmeal (it was plain those days), and have some food with my wildland gear.  At the beginning of each wildfire season, I put some granola bars in with my gear pack, because it may take a day or two to get the food arranged for the crews.  By the way, it took a few months before I could eat oatmeal again.

I spent most of the second day evacuating the residents.  We traveled to the ends of the roads off of the Gunflint Trail, and worked our way back, stopping at every residence.  If people were there, we gave them the evacuation procedures.  Otherwise, we left a note.  The residents who were cut off from Grand Marais by the fire were told to gather at Sag Landing, which is where I was stationed next along with Nace, who was another member of the department.

Boats were in the water in case the fire overcame the parking lot.  We had a plan to rendezvous at the Chippewa Inn in Ontario if our position was overtaken.  Luckily, that did not happen.

From time to time, we would get word to send the residents down the trail (towards Grand Marais).  We would let about five cars go, and get word from someone else that the fire was hopping back and forth over the Gunflint Trail again.  This happened several times before the residents were gone.

Once all the residents were out of there, I was put on lookout duty.  One of the main acronyms we learn as wildland firefighters is L.C.E.S., which stands for Lookouts, Communications, Escape Routes, and Safety Zones.  Someone is always supposed to be back from the fire a little ways, watching the backs of the people on the front lines.  We were making sure the crews up in the Trial's End Campground did not get cut off from their safety zones.

Once they had left the campground, we were able to retreat.  I was in one of the last two cars to leave the end of the Gunflint Trail that night.  Mike Prom was driving, and he had a yowling cat in the back.  It was after dark, and the glow of the Ham Lake Fire was eerily on both sides of the road as we headed down the trail.

May 7 - 8, 2007
The next couple of days (and for most of the rest of the incident), we were on structure protection.  We arrived at the overall briefing at 6:30 AM, and had our division or group briefings shortly after.  I was in Engine 583 with Don those days.  We would be assigned a section of a road, and told to protect the structures.

This meant walking around the properties, and putting out any fires that we came across.  We also checked on sprinkler systems, and marked the tree snags with "Deadly Tree" tape.  A sawyer would come along later, and remove them.

We flagged off the areas around the destroyed structures.  The outlines of the structures were still visible.  They looked like grey lines with neat piles of nails.  The chimneys were still standing, and we gave them a wide berth.  When we found a destroyed structure, we documented the position, and turned it in at the end of the day.

GTVFD Engine 2536 (Formerly 583)
I was attached to this truck for most of the Ham Lake Fire

We were working so hard those days that we would regularly go through a whole flat of water bottles for a two person crew.  I would finish one, and immediately drink another.  By that time,we also had good sack lunches, and dinners as well.

The fire went up through the end of the Gunflint Trail, into Ontario, and then came back to Gunflint Lake.  I remember hearing about possibly naming the incident the "Compass Fire", because the wind blew in every direction of the compass.  As the fire approached Gunflint Lake on May 9, 2007, a back burn was planned, which I will go into in the "Ham Lake Fire - Part 2."