‘Sky on fire’: Boundary Waters campers recall tense moments as flames neared
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When the U.S. Forest Service closed the entire Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness early Monday because of several large wildfires, forest officials estimated there were 6,000 to 10,000 people canoeing and camping there.
Most evacuations were uneventful. But some were quite harrowing. Some paddlers coming out of the Boundary Waters Monday shared some of their nerve-racking moments as they worked to get themselves and their loved ones off the water ahead of the fires closing in.
MPR News caught up with some families as they came out and an outfitter who brought boats to get people out who said he could feel embers falling on him.
‘The fire is coming for your campsite!’
Bailey Shinn paddled into the Boundary Waters last Wednesday for a big, extended family trip with her husband, parents and kids. She did not bet on 100-degree heat, fire and smoke to come along on the adventure.
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Shinn and her husband are schoolteachers from Texas, but they spend their summers in Ely. After spending a few days on Fall Lake, her parents left with Shinn’s oldest child. Then, she and her husband and three youngest kids, ages 5, 5 and 6, paddled into Newton Lake and then into Pipestone Bay.
On Monday, "we were swimming. I turned my phone on — take some pictures — and my mom texted like, ‘Hey, tomorrow Boundary Waters is going to be closed through Friday,’” she recalled.
As conditions deteriorated Monday near Pipestone Bay on Basswood Lake, what started as a leisurely pack-up of the family campsite turned urgent and a little scary.
“It was about 2:30 in the afternoon. And next thing we knew — I mean, it was sudden — there was smoke, lots of dark, dark smoke billowing right towards us,” she recalled. “People who were paddling by us were yelling at us like, ‘The fire is coming for your campsite! You need to leave immediately.’”
They shoved gear in their packs, leaving behind a new tent and other equipment.
"We could feel the heat. We were breathing the smoke. Our throats were scratchy, we had three young kids, so we … got the kids, and we were out."
The paddle out was stressful, she said. Waves slammed broadside against their canoes.
"It was very windy, and whitecaps — and it was a relief to arrive at Fall Lake. And my mom was there, and it was like, tears. And ‘OK, we made it,’ you know."
‘Sky on fire’
Farther up Pipestone Bay, the raging Camp Fire was quickly closing in on other canoeists.
Eric and Jan Bailey from Buffalo, Minn., were camped with their daughter and son-in-law, two grandkids and three dogs. They're experienced paddlers with more than 40 years of experience in the Boundary Waters and across the Canadian boundary in Quetico Provincial Park.
They first noticed some wispy smoke on the horizon, then a plume, then “from 2 o'clock to 4 o'clock it basically turned into a big firestorm to our east, coming closer and widening up as it went.”
They were camped on the south shore. By about 4:30 p.m., the other side of the water was ablaze.
"We saw basically the north shore of Pipestone Bay fully engulfed in a crown fire. Trees were exploding,” Eric Bailey said. “The trees were basically going up so fast that pieces of bark, puzzle pieces, were falling from the sky on fire."
A paddleboarder fled to their campsite when she saw flames coming over the ridge line. And she had a satellite phone.
“When she got there, we got a phone call from the Forest Service, and were told to stay in place on that campsite for rescue."
Standing on the shore they watched aircraft scoop up water to dump on the fire.
The wait grew tense, Jan Bailey said.
"We were feeling the heat from the flames, and the smoke was getting really intense, and so we had decided if he didn't show up within 10 minutes, we were getting our canoes and just going."
Finally, at about 5:30 p.m., two Forest Service crew members picked them up in a boat. They motored north where the fire had jumped across Pipestone Bay.
“We had fire on both sides of us at that time,” she said. “So we're just weaving between the lakes. It's a little smoky. Campsites are going up. The forest is going up, and we're getting people who were in that area out."
‘Pretty imminent threat’
The Baileys finally made it across a portage to Back Bay on another part of Basswood Lake.
There they were met by outfitters from Moose Lake who brought 10 boats to help evacuate campers. Willy Vosburgh, a resort owner on Moose Lake, drove a fishing boat two hours to help.
"We ended up pulling out people that did not have any gear because the Forest Service had plucked them from campsites that were in pretty imminent threat of burning,” he recalled. “The places where they had been were then overtaken by the fire."
He said he had embers falling on him as he motored to pick up the campers.
He evacuated seven campers then came back and picked up six more who were packed onto tow boats operated by another resort owner.
"The three towboats that came off of Back Bay last with people had 11 people apiece. They were loaded at 33 people, plus three drivers. So they had 36 people split between three boats."
He didn't make it back to the boat landing on Moose Lake until after 10 p.m.
When MPR News talked to Vosburgh earlier Tuesday afternoon, he was still waiting on three groups still in the wilderness. Then, he motored back into the wilderness and evacuated four more campers.
When he returned, he had to evacuate the resort that's been in his family for four generations and hope that it stayed safe from the encroaching fire.
