Unprecedented northern Minnesota wildfire brings in outside crews

Firefighters deployed from the southern United States have joined the fight as about 77,000 acres burn across northern Minnesota and across the Canadian border. The Superior National Forest fire complex includes 19 active fires, three of them in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and much of the footprint remains mostly uncontained.

The scale of the emergency is close to home for St. Louis County. Some of the fires have moved within about a mile of cabins near Ely, and earlier evacuations already forced people out of cabins and homes near Burntside Lake and northwest of the city. The U.S. Forest Service issued a wildfire emergency closure order, and multiple areas in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness were closed for public health as smoke continued to blanket the Northland.

For St. Louis County departments, the response shows how quickly a local wildfire can become a mutual-aid operation. Under Minnesota’s Intrastate Fire Mutual Aid Plan, an incident commander first asks for help through the local mutual-aid system before larger regional support is activated. MNICS, the Minnesota Incident Command System, ties together state and federal agencies with standard procedures and common terminology, while the Minnesota Wildfire Academy trains crews at places such as Minnesota North College’s Itasca Campus in Grand Rapids. Minnesota’s wildland fire training materials also stress basic but essential gear: flame-resistant clothing, proper footwear and approved radios for interagency fire use.

That infrastructure is being tested now. Governor Tim Walz declared a peacetime emergency and mobilized the Minnesota National Guard on July 12, then extended the emergency after a wildfire briefing on July 15. The fire situation is expected to last through the rest of the summer, which means more smoke days, more closure notices and more pressure on crews already stretched by the number of fires and the rough terrain around Ely and the Boundary Waters.

St. Louis County has already been feeling the smoke. The county’s air-quality information page says wildfire smoke continues to affect air quality across the county, and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has also tightened burning restrictions in northern St. Louis County during the fire season. For residents from Duluth to Ely, the fires are no longer just a North Shore or borderland problem: they are a regional readiness test that could reach local engines, local roads and local lungs again before summer ends.