Summer of 2020 one for history books

Looking east toward town at thunderhead of smoke.

 We got back a week ago from about six weeks at our little cabin at Red Lake, exhausted from a whirlwind of building and forest fires.

Where do I start? The fire that caused the second evacuation of Red Lake in its history, I guess.

We were on our way to Black Bear Lodge for dinner Monday, Aug. 10, when we saw a massive thunderhead of smoke coming up from the east. There had been a vicious west wind all day, so windy, in fact that we delayed boating over to the camp of Jim and Jillian Slavich and considered cancelling altogether. Then the wind dropped a little and we took off in our Eastern 20-foot boat which is made for the ocean. The boat held Brenda, our son Matt, our dog, Cork, and me.

From the location I guessed the fire was near Madsen which is a few miles west of Red Lake. The smoke plume rolling many thousands of feet in the air told the story: this fire was flying at frightening speed eastward toward the communities.

There wasn't anything we could do about it, however, so Jim and Jillian went ahead and served us delicious smoked ribs and corn on the cob. As we were finishing an electrician from Madsen mine drove into camp. He had been cut off by the fire and fled up Suffel Lake Road to the camp while he waited for someone to come by boat from town to pick him up. The Slaviches sat him down to the table.

The wind had dropped substantially by the time we left a couple of hours later.

First thing the next morning Brian Spillar from Bow Narrows came with the news that Red Lake had been evacuated. We listened to our satellite radio for news each day. Next summer I'm taking the AM/FM radio as well because there was only a mention on the CBC satellite program.

No sooner had Brian gone back to work at the camp where he is finishing a new cabin when Lee Austen boated up to the dock.

"Are you going to be alright for food?" he asked. Lee and his wife, Kim, were at their cabin which is just upstream of Bow Narrows on the same side of the narrows. What thoughtful people!

Everything in Red Lake was closed, Lee explained, but they had lots of food at their home in town and would drive in and get some if we needed it. We thanked him and told him we were OK for a few days at least.

Then we heard that all travel was banned in Red Lake. 

I journeyed to a rocky point each day over by Muskrat Bay where I could sometimes get a cell signal.

One day there was a message from Jim Slavich informing that they had evacuated to Ear Falls. I answered his text when my phone buzzed. It was Jim. He wanted to know if we could go over to their camp and check their freezers. If things were OK, could we start the generator and let it run all day to cool everything down. And help ourselves to any food, he added. Hallelujah!

Lee then answered another prayer by giving us 5 gallons of gas so we could run our generator and use power tools. And Brian gave us purified drinking water! My goodness but we are blessed with such good friends.

Matt was stranded in Red Lake for nearly a week before the road reopened and he could head home again.

In the meantime we finished installing steel siding on the cabin. In fact, the little 12 x 24 cabin is completely finished, inside and out. Next year we can just open the door and start work on the main cabin which we've downsized since the little cabin morphed into what will become two bedrooms.

The fire that caused the evacuation wasn't the first we had experienced. Just two days earlier, we heard a helicopter circling just to the west. Brenda came running up from the dock to say there was lots of smoke just north of the camp.

Fearing that Kim and Lee's place might be blazing, Matt and I jumped in our little fishing boat and raced to help. We soon saw that the fire was at the end of Middle Bay and realized it was a new cabin that was under construction. There already was a fire crew and a helicopter on scene when we got there and another helicopter was coming in.

We pulled up tight to the marsh at Dean Creek so we would be out of the way when the second helicopter landed right on the floating muskeg of the marsh a couple of hundred yards away. It eventually took off trailing a large bucket but something was wrong and it landed again and flew away without it. Meanwhile several boats took a fire crew which had exited the chopper over to the fire.

Just then two water bombers showed up and we beat it figuring everything was well in hand.

The two-storey, 3,500 square foot cabin was totally destroyed. It had been under construction for two years by builders from Red Lake. The fire started on a Saturday when no one was there. It was very windy and the fire hazard was high. 

When we got back to our place I got my fire pump out of the shed and hooked it up on the dock, ready to go at a moment's notice if needed. I noticed Lee had done the same.

The MNRF aerial and ground attack extinguished the Middle Bay blaze in just a couple of hours but one crew stayed behind to keep watch. Just before dark they spotted another fire. This was a jump fire from the sparks of the first. It was burning on the Pipestone Narrows peninsula. This was put out quickly and a good thing too because it could have threatened the three cabins in Sadler Bay narrows and eventually others, including us.

More about the summer in the next posting...