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The Balrog of Moria (called Durin's Bane) from The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.
Not that I’m taking fire lightly, but weren’t we (in cities, towns and townships) very much aware that a great many green organic things would burn like fury under the right (and not all that rare) circumstances?
Flour mills exploded (a very fast burn), shirt factories caught fire, coal piles ignited, and so on.
Nary a soul, I suspect, had any doubt their wooden home was perilous close to being a pile of tinder. (Earlier owner of first house I bought insisted every room – excluding bath – had an outside exit. Why? To escape fire.)
We’ve long known nothing stops flammable structures surrounded by organic combustibles from burning. And yet.
What recently happened on the popular, populous West Coast isn’t an out-of-the-blue event. In Midwestern terms, far from.
The Chicago Fire, 1870s. Nearer by, Hinckley Fire, 1894. Nearer yet, Cloquet Fire, 1918. Each event brought enough lessons allowing for better planning. The ill side of balloon construction was revealed. The need to manage lumbering slash became clear. Fire management of hazardous areas and conditions began.
We learned a few things, but how often are we reminded that much of our forests and BWCAW contain trees called fire species? Easy to set aside the obvious. Trees burn, some more readily than others, but they’ll all do it given a start.
Long planted on the North Shore, I was assured of 25% less fire danger. No flames were going to come whooping up from the lake. The other three directions were not as safe.
Recognizing what was, programs such as Fire Wise encouraged property owners with long entries to create pull-offs to accommodate fire trucks in an emergency. Was an owner forced? No. But if you wanted service and protection it made sense to make that easier rather than harder.
But here some advice begins to depart. Should you be environmentally friendly (“Hello dear shrubs!”) and naturalize or maintain a mowed lawn? You shouldn’t need a government agency or insurance agent to tell you a mowed lawn is less likely to carry fire to your house than are tall grasses and shrubbery.
I decided to keep trees at a distance and have a lawn. I’d seen and worked on a very nearby fire and had seen the fiery result of vegetation encroaching structures. Whoosh! Fire and flame are demonically quick and cunning as a Balrog.
Doing a little to be prepared and mitigate was good. Adding a little more was better. An entire front yard full of Lake Superior water made having a fire pump on hand a sensible and effective idea. Of course, it had to be annually positioned and serviced, intake, hoses and nozzles checked for readiness. There is no glamor in doing such things. It will even feel a futile waste of time as another year of fussing comes and goes. The waste of time ends utterly and completely soon as you need water and know you’re ready to handle the situation.
Were I the only fire vulnerable property with a personal response crew I’d need not worry. But I wasn’t. Never would be. Why not make things in a difficult situation slightly easier for others while also helping myself? I felt it best to be realistically ready if things got out of hand and fire spread.
As most northlanders heard the events in California, I imagine relatively few of us thought of our north country having many of the same elements. We do. After a situation is resolved or mediated it soon slips from active consideration to occasional reminder to virtually forgotten.
You may recall some decades past the violent winds that felled forests near the Gunflint Trail and into Canada. Doing an archaeology survey near the border, I very much recall the difficulty of an obliterated portage or crawling under toppled trees where working was near impossible.
I also recall (with amusement) the reaction of cabin-people along the trail when they realized downed trees meant forest fire fuel. Much concern. “Save us!”
Thinking to myself that if people built on lakeshore and surrounded themselves with beautiful trees, awareness of forest flammability should have arisen before disaster poked over the horizon. But people are, if nothing else, people.
I knew many “woodsman spare that tree” types and as many “I’m here to have fun not clear brush” types. With all that fuel on the ground and fire danger growing, the lovers and the lazy faced loss of everything.
That’s where we came in with programs to help install and maintain individual cabin-owner fire pumps. Mighty decent of us. Not so decent if your cabin wasn’t directly on the water or sat on a sideroad or was on Lake Superior. The boon was for some and not others. Typical.
As the years passed I saw more and more of those systems degrade, their maintenance agreement lapse and so on. Sad. But easier to stomach if other people helped grease the wheels instead of the entire burden being your own. Much easier.
Freezing February, getting daily nearer, is a slack fire danger season. We’re lucky that way in that we can narrow down and zoom in on the time windows when danger is great. But people being people and us being us, we’re rather apt to let ice fishing in February slide on into the leafy green of spring when there are so many other things to do other than boring maintenance or plan for ill conditions.
Sprucing up, planting perennials and devastating the favorite walleye hole are much more appealing. But new paint, a bold splash of geraniums or fish in the freezer will do not one thing to deter disaster.
A lesson seen in California lately might be one we could call (if you want success) “keep your hook in the water.” No hook in the water, no fish. Eye on the ball. A new logo or brightly painted truck with new logo, even if assisted by a catchy motto, isn’t going to phase something like a fire.
It’s worth keeping forward in mind that wooden houses, forest and the combustibles around us are all capable of devastating fire. Remember now, and when it matters more.
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