August 21st, 2021 A Comment on Wild Fire

A Comment on Wild Fire

This proved to be a rather lengthy comment I left on a fellow blogger's post in Wannaskan Almanac: https://wannaskanalmanac.blogspot.com/2021/08/forest-fire.html#comments I decided it was more appropriate to put it here and maybe add some images.

     When Chairman Joe and I interviewed Elmer Benson of Palmville, in 1994, he told us of the fire of 1910 (I think) around here, how many lost haystacks they had put up, and how the cedar forest burned; and the peat bogs. He said that some of the landscape changed as much as four feet in places where the fire burned its way through the peat. Elmer's great grandchildren have a VHS copy of that interview to confirm its date. Another guy who probably knew all about it was John Mielke of Skime...

    Lest we forget the Great Hinckley Minnesota Fire of 1894 which burned a phenomenal 350,000 acres or more than 400 squares miles. Unfortunately, that is not the worst of it. The fire also took the lives of at least 418 men, women, and children. Countless pets, livestock, and wildlife were also lost.

   I had my first exciting/horrendous experiences of accidental fires here 'way back in the early 1980s, when, as I disked a firebreak in a little clearing north of the house to avoid exactly such an event, a fire I had set (I was very new at it, although 'Just burn it off' was the township mantra at the time.) got in behind me when I didn't notice and was off and running good before I noticed.

   Desperate to contain it with just a couple pairs of wet blue jeans (before the days of owning two backpack water pumps for firefighting), which by the way, are pretty good fire swatters if you have a pail and ready source of water available, I faced the decision of fighting it by myself and possibly letting it get away, or running to call my close neighbor/friend Jerry Solom for help -- and let it get away. There were no cellphones then. Calling the fire department wasn't in the cards; for as a Palmville resident one fought your own fires --with the neighbors helping you, if you were so lucky -- before you turned to the DNR or fire department at the absolutely last resort.

    Jerry never hesitated. He rolled out of his bed and into his orange Pinto Station wagon in a flash, grabbing whatever pails, and fire 'tools', including an opened sleeping bag he thought could be handy as an oppressor if he could wet it down: that man could think on his feet, I tell you!

    Arriving very shortly to my place only a mile away as the crow flies, he drove his vehicle nearer the fire to save time but seeing the conflagration ahead of him, backed up and ran into my house to call his wife, Marion, to tell her to call the neighbors.

    Hearing others voices through the smoke and flames, was a godsend to me now quite exhausted as my asthma was wearing me down. Marion couldn't come as she had little children to care for, but Joe, and neighbor Lloyd D., and Jerry, and another I can't remember (Sorry) were there swatting and shoveling; the fire bore west but had gotten into the swamp of dry grass along the south side of Mikinak Creek too; but we stopped it there before it roared northward into 'Palmville jungle land.'

    I was ignorantly confident the shallow water west of the little field would stop the flames there, just as there seemed fire everywhere and all was lost, when we could hear a big vehicle drive into the yard and, thinking it was a bulldozer or heavy equipment -- I just knew it was the DNR ... [Expletive here]

    Nope, it was neighbor Ed D. on his huge four-wheel drive tractor with an implement behind. He saw the orange glow in the sky north of where he was working a field that night, and all the cars pulling into my driveway. Putting two and two together, knowing one day it could be his place, he came to help. It was much appreciated.

    We formed a bucket brigade from the creek, the end guy standing knee-deep in water; and through long mighty efforts stopped the fire that had crossed the shallow water it feeding on dry grass growing on it, just as it reached the base of the high creek bank above which was a field of spruce trees I had planted five years earlier; the fire would've swept the field.

After a few hours, the fire was out except where it smouldered under fallen trees and burnt tree stumps. I thanked my neighbors, and after they left remained at the fire site through the early morning hours, extinguishing still-burning embers.

Thanks to all the neighbors who helped me -- and Marion who quickly put the word out.