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Crime, Law and Justice
Cari Spencer

DNR wants man who started 2025 Camp House Fire to pay $4.3 million

A campfire site sits in front of a charred forest that was burned in a wildfire.
A picture of the campfire that grew out of control and became the Camp House Fire, which burned about 12,000 acres of forest.
Courtesy of the Minnesota DNR

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Last year, after the Camp House Fire burned through 12,000 acres of forest, 63 homes and 142 cabins and other structures, the man who pleaded guilty to starting it paid a $175 fine.

Now, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources wants him to pay $4.3 million.

On the morning of May 11, 2025, Parker John Wilson, then 26, lit a small fire to cook breakfast on his land, outside the small northern town of Brimson. It was an unseasonably hot, dry and windy day.

Before leaving with a friend to buy fishing supplies, he poured water over the flame. But the coals continued to smolder. When they returned a few hours later, the fire had spread.

Wilson called 911 while his friend moved downed trees out of the way, but by the time firefighters arrived, it was too late. The fire quickly swelled out of control, burning through mulch, then a dry forest filled with dead evergreen trees.

It took hundreds of firefighters a month to completely contain the blaze.

The DNR is pursuing civil damages, under the Minnesota Wildfire Act, for the cost of wildfire suppression. The agency “does not initially consider a defendant’s ability to pay,” according to a statement from the DNR.

“This recovery cost reflects expenses incurred by DNR including firefighters, aircraft, equipment and emergency response operations,” the statement reads. “It does not include private property losses, which the DNR is not authorized to seek to recover on behalf of individuals.”

St. Louis County estimated that the fire caused private property losses of at least $2.3 million and another $2.8 million in damages to public property and infrastructure.

Last year, the Minnesota DNR — in consultation with the St. Louis County Attorney’s Office — ultimately charged Wilson with “Failure to Extinguish a Fire,” which is a petty misdemeanor.

DFL State Sen. Grant Hauschild of Hermantown told MPR News that residents in the area felt that punishment didn’t match the crime.

“You know, hundreds of properties, massive damage, disruptions to our communities and the state and local costs that went into the response — and the fact that this was essentially a speeding ticket payment — is really, I think, a miscalculation on how these things should go,” Hauschild said last winter.

MPR News reached out to Wilson but he declined to comment.

MPR News Duluth correspondent Dan Kraker contributed to this story.