Book review: Gunflint Burning
Gunflint Burning
Fire in the Boundary Waters
Author: Cary J. Griffith
University of Minnesota Press
Reviewed by Timothy Eaton
A gripping nonfiction account of the 2007 Ham Lake Fire written by Cary J. Griffith
Read no more than the prologue of Gunflint Burning and you will want to read this book cover-to-cover. The book is a detailed account of what really happened when an unattended campfire on Ham Lake, in the eastern section of BWCA wilderness, blew out of control on May 5, 2007. What followed was an unstoppable eleven-day fire event. And, what Cary Griffith so skillfully accounts, is the epic 5-day battle up-and-down the Gunflint Trail to stop the fire’s destruction of private property. You’ll also learn how and why the Cavity Lake fire, a few years earlier, laid the groundwork and preparedness to eventually win the battle of protecting the hundreds of private structures along this wilderness trail.
Yes, this is the story of the Ham Lake fire and the person responsible for its start. However, the more profound story told is about the character and courage of those who live along the Gunflint Trail. You will intimately come to know each of the books real characters; the role each played, and who, along with whom the volunteer fire brigades from the nearby communities, took charge and battled an unstoppable fire for the first 96 hours before the professional ‘hotshots’ and Type II and Type I levels of fire command arrived from the Forest Service.
The Ham Lake fire may have had an innocent start but it soon behaved like a violent storm. The unattended campfire was fueled by a relentless weather pattern; days of low humidity and high winds, with constantly changing wind directions which spotted new fire after new fire after new fire in front of its twisted path for the first five days. The fire burned on for eleven days consuming some 75,000 acres of canoe country wilderness along both sides of the border between Minnesota and Ontario, Canada that we know as the Quetico-Superior region.
Griffith’s in-depth research and skillful writing chronicles the fire by the people who were there, inside the fire, witnessing events from different vantage points within the BWCA and along the Trail. Day-by-day, and at times hour-by-hour, you’ll be standing alongside those first responders battling the fire. You’ll learn who made some uncanny decisions that literally bent the fire and controlled its path around private structures; assets valued in the millions of dollars. These early responders moved up and down the trail as the fire spotted and changed direction. More than once they stood their ground and made a stand against a firestorm that raged to the end-of-the Gunflint Trail and then on into Canada, in an attempt to destroy everything in its path.
If you have camped in the BWCAW or the Quetico wilderness, or if you have driven the full length of the Gunflint Trail from Grand Marais to the end, you will want to read this book. And, before you strike a match to light your next wilderness campfire read this book.
