Wildfire Management: Ely Wildfires Part 2

Part 2 of our mini series responding to the 2026 July lightning wildfires in the BWCA Wilderness and beyond. We’ll have a conversation with our friend and neighbor Aaron Kania, an expert in wildfire management and former US Forest Service Kawishiwi District Ranger (now in retirement). We’ll discuss how these fires got started, how they’re being fought, the logistics of managing wildfires, and the reality of fire on the landscape. 

CONVERSATION HIGHLIGHTS: 

1:49 | Introducing Aaron (an educator at heart)

3:54 | Are we losing our Wilderness? No! The wilderness evolved with fire.

7:19 | But it is true that high intensity fire creates a different shift than low intensity fire.

9:20 | Indigenous burning: The 400 year old tree & Bud Heinselman's core

11:22 | How long until these campsites are usable? (And latrine rescue)

15:11 | There are about 1,000 prescribed fires in the Boundary Waters every single night!

16:37 | What a reframe! Doing fire wise work around our campsites.

17:28 | What are fire wise practices?

19:12 | What are the tactical manuevers being executed to protect us?

25:59 | And are any of these tactics different in a Wilderness context?

27:57 | On the power of delegation

29:07 | Every time our community experiences a fire, we learn from it.

31:33 | The body can't go where the mind hasn't been.

32:40 | How do we pace ourselves for this new reality?

34:00 | This is an abnormal situation, right?

36:43 | A risk deferred

38:00 | Gratitude to the firefighters

38:30 | Weather this started this fire, and weather is going to put it out???

42:04 | Observer & Dallas's wisdom

44:10 | Again, GRATITUDE TO OUR FIREFIGHTERS!

45:27 | Please give us a 5-star review :)

SHOW NOTES: 

Ely Community Response 

Looking for places to donate to support? 

Tuesday Group: Forest Fire Behavior & Tree Mortality

Tuesday Group: Pagami Creek Fire Overview 

Tuesday Group: Ecological Impacts of Pagami Creek Fire  

Pagami Fire Video - Wildland Fire LLC

Tuesday Group: In the Face of Fire 

Tuesday Group: Forest Fire Fuels Reduction 

Boundary Waters Connect

Transcript

Aaron Kania 0:07

I mean all of these things are very risky, so then that gets back to that fire management organization to have your medical staff, your safety officers, and your hospital liaison, EMTs, yeah. And so that whole organization is huge, but it's really so that that firefighter can be most effective with the strategy that they're implementing. And I think what's remarkable is Ely, even the Gunfling Trail, other parts of our community have been through this. So in this community, every time there's been a fire, this community has learned from it. And we're applying those lessons learned to how you conduct an evacuation. And so when the incident management first responders and the sheriff say, okay, it's time to go, people have heard that before. They can start understanding what they need to do. And I would say just looking at the way these evacuations have gone, it has been fairly smooth.

Lacey Squier 1:10

Welcome to Wilderness Edge, a podcast about the people who live on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota. This podcast shines a spotlight on the people who make up the everyday experiences of life on the edge. This episode is part two of our mini-series responding to the 2026 July Lightning Wildfire Situation, a so-called complex of fires. We'll have a conversation with my friend and neighbor Aaron Kanya, an expert in wildfire management and former U.S. Forest Service Kowishi District Ranger. We'll discuss how these fires got started, how they're being fought, the logistics of managing wildfires, and the reality of fire on the landscape.

Introducing Aaron (an educator at heart)

Lacey Squier 1:49

Hey, Aaron.

Aaron Kania 1:50

Hello, Lacey.

Lacey Squier 1:51

Welcome back.

Aaron Kania 1:52

Yeah, and Brett.

Lacey Squier 1:54

We're so glad to have you. You've actually so you were on episode six of the What's Up Ely podcast.

Aaron Kania 2:01

Oh, okay.

Lacey Squier 2:02

That was a long time ago.

Aaron Kania 2:03

That seemed like a long time ago. We had a couple of them in there.

Lacey Squier 2:06

Yeah, yeah. You've been in multiple episodes of the What's Up Ely podcast and maybe multiple of Forest North. A couple of Forest North episodes.

Aaron Kania 2:13

A couple of Forests North. And yeah, there's there's a lot out there in podcast land. So good, good content.

Lacey Squier 2:20

Yeah, so if people want to know more like acutely what a U.S. Forest Service district ranger does, if they want to know more about your personal background and history, I just re-listened to that episode six of the What's Up Ely podcast. And I forgot that your original dream, um, maybe back in the days when you were in college, was to be a history teacher.

Aaron Kania 2:47

Yes. Wow, we've come a long way.

Lacey Squier 2:50

My oh my. But then now that I know you, you know, I've known you for a few years, I've gotten to know you better over time, and I do see that history teacher in you and how you interact with people. You are you're an educator at heart. I I think maybe. What do you think?

Aaron Kania 3:08

I think so too. And maybe that's a good point, is I failed as a history teacher because I couldn't stand being inside all day. And I feel like maybe my classroom is the outdoor classroom now. And I was just out on the Greenwood fire and you know, in the trees and looking at the effects of that fire and the activities we did five years ago, and telling that story through the forest, you know, through the blueberries and raspberries and the stumps, and you know, and and that's how that story is told. And I love that. I that's a fantastic point, Lacey. That's why I love the these interviews with you.

Lacey Squier 3:51

I see you. I

Are we losing our Wilderness? No! The wilderness evolved with fire.

Lacey Squier 3:54

I am curious, like you know, it's it's fun to have you here. I'm excited to be having this conversation. So in this moment, my energy feels you know, joyous and happy. But uh, you know, we were at the community the community public information session hosted by the US Forest Service at the you know Vermilion campus last night, and and most of the time I'm actually feeling quite somber and a little bit scared. I feel sad. Like, so I'm I'm glad you bring up going to the Greenwood Fire location. So the Greenwood Fire was 2021. And right now, because I'm not an expert, but I have, you know, I've hosted Tuesday group, I've hosted these podcasts, I have an understanding of the difference between a low intensity burn, a mid-intensity burn, and what that does for the pines in the forest and a high intensity burn. And right now I feel like we're losing half of our wilderness.

Aaron Kania 4:51

Ah, yeah. Is that tell me what you think about that? I'm so glad you brought that up. Um, because last night at that community meeting, they had these breakout sessions with with experts from these fires. And I brought my map in here because two years ago we did a paddle trip through the bear trap fire that's that's now burning. And four years ago, we were on the south end of the bear trap, and and I'm thinking about actual specific trees that were at the campsites and out in the wilderness. And so I went, I beelined it for the person who's been flying over these fires, and I actually asked about like had the map, and I'm like, so what about this lake? What about that lake? What about and um and what he said is the fire effects are actually in places wonderful.

Lacey Squier 5:46

Wow.

Aaron Kania 5:46

And and in my mind, what with that thinking about the timeline here is these fires have been burning all night. You know, there was a couple times I'd wake up in the morning and check the the satellite information and just see, it's like, wow, that fire moved all night. It was hot all night, it was windy all night, but that fire moderated during the night and it passed through the forest. And when it did, I think it was a lower intensity. So what he was saying about what he saw from the air looking down on the forest is like actually the pines are still alive. It kind of cleaned out the underbrush, and so there might be places out there that it's gonna look better in some ways, like it's gonna take time to determine, like you know, if the roots were too hot or you know, it it burned the needles. But um, but I think as a community it'll be phenomenal to watch, and then there's places where it's definitely higher intensity, but that's gonna create a mosaic on the landscape. Yeah, and honestly, the moose um the moose are gonna flourish out there. We're gonna probably have the most moose we've had in a long, long time at Nina Moose. Yeah, yeah.

Lacey Squier 7:02

I am wearing my blueberry earrings that I recently purchased from Blue Loon Boutique. Um, quick little plug, in sort of as a little prayer for water so the blueberries of this season can thrive, but then also in celebration of the blueberries to come.

Aaron Kania 7:18

Yeah.

But it is true that high intensity fire creates a different shift than low intensity fire.

Lacey Squier 7:19

But but it is true, right? The high intensity fires may mean that we're losing some of our pines. And climate change and the realities of the migration of the mixed forest into the lower boreal means that our wilderness character will fundamentally change.

Aaron Kania 7:41

Well, the naturalness, right? So one of the wilderness characters is naturalness.

Lacey Squier 7:46

Yeah.

Aaron Kania 7:47

Um I guess we'd have to have a longer conversation about is climate change natural. We might need different experts in the room for that. Uh but you know, obviously since the glaciers receded, we've seen vegetation move north and south, and uh we're gonna see that again. You know, we'll definitely see a change. That's that's been a long time predicted, and um there will definitely be a shift. You know, it might, I mean, these these species are evolved with fire. Uh they're really designed by nature for fire. Um, so it's gonna open up the ground, it's gonna allow seed beds for jackpine to come in, and they've been waiting for that, right? So some of that jackpine out there is really old and probably towards the end of its life cycle, and it needed this, it needed the ground swept and those cones, the heat to open those cones, and there's gonna be a a flush, uh release of of jackpine. And um had we not had these fires, maybe we would have lost jackpine.

Lacey Squier 9:00

Yeah, that's a good point.

Aaron Kania 9:01

So it's um it's giving a little credit to Mother Nature to she knows what she wants.

Lacey Squier 9:07

Yeah. So she goes and gets it.

Aaron Kania 9:10

Yeah.

Lacey Squier 9:11

I but I there was, I think it was last night. I I'm not finding my note about it, but basically there are some fires, and maybe you were the one who

Indigenous burning: The 400 year old tree & Bud Heinselman's core

Lacey Squier 9:20

said it. There are fires that are quote stand-replacing fires.

Aaron Kania 9:25

Yeah.

Lacey Squier 9:25

That you said that in our first episode.

Aaron Kania 9:28

Well, probably so, yeah. Bud Bud Heinzelman, you know, a lot of folks in Ely know Bud Heinzelman, and that was one of the trees I wanted to check on. Was uh there's a campsite on Gull Lake that has this massive pine tree, and it's gotta be 400 years old. And on the back side of it, there's a hole that somebody cored a sample out of, and I swear that it was Bud. And I I keep looking for the records and I'll eventually find it. But um, that was like the first tree I asked about, and yeah, so 400 years ago, there was probably a stand-replacing fire, and that tree, that seed, found a place to land, and now it's this magnificent tree on this beautiful campsite, and uh as far as I know, it's still there. Um, but that's it exactly. Um, yeah, this this is not unknown for this landscape. Um, actually, Bud Heinzelman's maps. Um, you can actually go online and Google it and um I guess search it up. And uh, you know, you can find his actual topographic maps where he drew all the lines and see, like, I mean, there's some years like 1864 where more than half of the boundary waters burned that year.

Lacey Squier 10:45

Wow.

Aaron Kania 10:45

I mean, the fires were different because our natural resource management was very different back then.

Lacey Squier 10:50

Well, they had the different, what is it, build-up index?

Aaron Kania 10:53

Yeah, that was the build-up index. But um, even back then, though, it was a indigenous forest management practice, a cultural practice where fire was really um one of the only tools or the major tool, um, versus today where logging is the um the primary tool. So it's a very different um forest management. But yeah, back in 1864 there was major fires throughout this whole landscape, and you can see it in Bud Heinzelman's maps.

Lacey Squier 11:21

Yeah.

How long until these campsites are usable? (And latrine rescue)

Lacey Squier 11:22

I have a a question around, like, you know, I when Eric and I got married, we did a little honeymoon trip into the boundary waters and we stayed at a campsite on Jackfish Bay.

Aaron Kania 11:34

Uh-huh.

Lacey Squier 11:34

And it was beautiful, it was lovely. There was both a sandy approach for our boats and a miniature little like rock ledge we could jump off of. And he actually went back recently. He was on that very campsite um at the end of June. And now that part of the wilderness is on fire. Do you have any sense of like when it would be ready to go camping on again? Like what I just I is it where the fires are burning, are they gonna be un either undesirable or untenable to camp on? And if so, for how long? You know, like are these are these parts of the landscape kind of going offline for recreation for a period of time?

Aaron Kania 12:21

Yeah, well, we have a perfect example in the Pegami fire, right? Which is now 15 years ago.

Lacey Squier 12:27

I can't believe that was 15 years ago.

Aaron Kania 12:29

Yeah, but um, those same questions were happening back then, right?

Lacey Squier 12:33

And that was devastating because that's Lake One, Lake Two, Lake Three, and those are some of the most commonly interfaced with lakes.

Aaron Kania 12:41

Huge, yeah, uh tremendous. So, you know, what happened back then, um, the Forest Service, so there's there's even right now, there's there's a thought process of uh they call it suppression repair, like you fix any damage, but then hazard tree removal. So, like along the roads, um, maybe the portages that um as these fires eventually wind down, there will still be fire resources to address issues. Like you don't want a tree falling across the portage, and if it was caused by the fire, well, then maybe you could do some remediation work.

Lacey Squier 13:17

Yep.

Aaron Kania 13:17

So back after Pagami, that happened, um, hazardous trees around campsites, because obviously you don't want to be sleeping in the middle of the night and the wind picks up and a fire damaged tree falls down on your campsite. So a lot of remediation work that'll take time, you know, just to get out there and assess it, like once um these fires in a in a place that you know there's capacity to do that. And then even after Bagami, there there was several campsites that were closed. Um, the powwow trail is a phenomenal example of the community coming together to do work to clear that trail, to reopen campsites to bring latrines back in, uh, bring fire grates back in.

Lacey Squier 13:58

Um yeah, did they get destroyed?

Aaron Kania 14:00

Yeah, well, the latrines, um, the latrines for sure. Yeah, they they could very well be gone. Um, sometimes, like uh there's stories of um, you know, rangers at certain times like rescuing the latrines because they know how much work it takes to pack them in there. Um, and so like as they clear campers out of the area, if they have just a moment to go snag a latrine and bring it to the shore, um, you know, like that's one of the priorities for some people. Yeah, I mean it's not the priority, but like if you have a hot second uh move a latrine, like move the latrine, and and then it'll be there in the future. But there's all those kind of considerations. And then honestly, uh we did a trip. Um we did a trip through like Thomas Insula. Um, it was the 10-year anniversary of Pagami. We were out there like on the day of the 10-year anniversary, uh, Roxanne and I, and um, we kind of you know relived that experience um in a way of like wow, what it must have been like, and you know, camping on those campsites was really interesting though, because every

There are about 1,000 prescribed fires in the Boundary Waters every single night!

Aaron Kania 15:11

night, you know, traditionally in the boundary waters, every single night, there's about 1,000 prescribed fires that are occurring.

Lacey Squier 15:21

Prescribed fires?

Aaron Kania 15:22

Prescribed fires in the boundary waters? In the boundary waters, every single night. Who prescribed them? This I'm pausing here because I'm trying not to laugh. But um yeah, every campfire campers we have out there is a prescribed fire, right? There's very specific conditions, it's in a very specific spot, but you know, those campers are going through that campsite and they're they're picking up down and dead wood, and you know, um, and so they're actually like clearing, they're firewising that campsite. And so what's interesting is in Pagami, in that Pagami scar, as you're going through those lakes, um, and you look across the lake, and it's I mean, it's there's the forest is vastly reduced. Um, but then you'll see on the far shore a clump of trees, and you're like, wow, how did that clump of trees survive? So you go over there and it's like, oh, there's a campsite, because there was all of those prescribed fires that reduced the fuel load around those campsites. So in a lot of a lot of times those campsites actually survive, the vegetation around them survives because of all of these micro prescribed fires.

What a reframe! Doing fire wise work around our campsites.

Aaron Kania 16:37

Campfires. It's amazing.

Lacey Squier 16:39

What a reframe, what a shift in my own thinking that you've initiated here. Ignited, if you will. But it so yeah, it is sort of having campers and paddlers and wilderness trekkers go into the wilderness and engage in the best possible you know, practices related to procuring firewood is a fire management tool and strategy.

Aaron Kania 17:07

Well, yeah, and it's I don't it's unintentional, but but definitely the unintended consequence is that we're doing firewise work around our campsites.

Lacey Squier 17:17

Wow. Well, speaking of firewise work, I mean, just given your level of of expertise, your relationship to interacting with fire management.

What are fire wise practices?

Lacey Squier 17:28

I mean, what would you have listeners know about firewise practices? I guess just a quick shout-out to firewise practices. That's not what this episode is about, but what should people know about some basic firewise practices?

Aaron Kania 17:45

Uh well, there's a responsibility when you live in the woods, you know, um, you know, caring for your environment, you know, that land around you. So even just simple basic things, right? That people can do right now um that are minimal is is clearing your gutters, right? Leaves and needles like to collect in there and and they're a place for a spark to land and and then ignite and then you know, right around your house, um, making sure you don't have piles of firewood, making sure you don't have like grass growing right up to your foundation. Um, you know, sometimes we have a pile of lumber. I'm guilty of this, um, you know, close to the house and making sure those are moved away. Uh there's things like your windows and shutters and uh your vents, you know, that that you have some sort of cover or screen so that embers can't get into your house.

Lacey Squier 18:40

Yeah, I learned that embers can travel over a mile.

Aaron Kania 18:43

Yeah, yeah, and and that's really this paper birch, you know. Um, I was just talking about that the other day. That, you know, when a paper birch ignites, the those big flakes of bark will come off, light on fire, and then float in the wind. And they're still.

Lacey Squier 18:59

And it's almost like they were designed to do that.

Aaron Kania 19:01

Uh well, yeah, you know, again, like Mother Nature designed this forest around fire.

Lacey Squier 19:06

Yeah.

Aaron Kania 19:06

Mm-hmm.

Lacey Squier 19:07

Tell us about like truly, I have no,

What are the tactical manuevers being executed to protect us?

Lacey Squier 19:12

I cannot visualize or fathom. We've got 500 wildland firefighters in the region working on these fires. When they are out there, what are they doing? What are the tactics? What are the tactical maneuvers that are being executed to protect us?

Aaron Kania 19:32

Yeah, yeah. Um, just the management of that. So on the Greenwood Fire, I think at the height of the Greenwood Fire, we had about 550. The number I heard last night was 700 and probably growing. Wow. Okay. Um, so it's really this um you have the incident commander, right? Who is getting leadership and direction from the Forest Service or the DNR or even the county um as far as what they want.

Lacey Squier 19:57

The incident commander.

Aaron Kania 19:58

Yep, yep, is being supervised by the land management agencies. And then underneath the incident commander are all of these functions. So it's all the pieces that work, um, because firefighters need food, so you have logistics, right? Food, gas, water, band-aids, like everything. So you have logistics, you have finance, because everybody needs to get paid at the end of this, and um, like the college needs to be paid for use of that space. Um, obviously the public information. Um, I'm a liaison officer. I work directly for the incident commander, and I go out in the community, meet with people like the mayor and the sheriff and county commissioners and stuff like that. Um, but then you have operations, and operations, I think, is what most people see out and about. And so, so then there's different um branches of that operation. So, so there's a contingent out there of loggers that are out doing a shaded fuel break, which is what we see on highway one when we go through the greenwood fire. That was a shaded fuel break. So they're removing trees, um, opening it up so that the fire activity will be less intense.

Lacey Squier 21:12

And they're like literally cutting down trees.

Aaron Kania 21:14

Yeah, yeah.

Lacey Squier 21:14

Strategically chosen trees to break the movement.

Aaron Kania 21:18

Exactly. Yep, and they're using logging equipment, logging trucks, and they're moving that fuel out of the area, like the echo trail. Yep. We've been working off of that for a long time to prepare it for just this scenario. Yep. So that's one piece of operations, and then you'll have hotshot crews, right? Which you know, we hear a lot about hotshot crews, they have those really cool buggies, they're very solid, um, highly experienced organization. Well branded. Yeah. For sure, right? Um, there's some great podcasts out there about hotshots, hotshot wake up. They come with some swagger for sure. Oh, yeah, for sure, yeah.

Lacey Squier 22:00

Do they all have long shiny hair? Or is that just the ones I know?

Aaron Kania 22:03

Uh yeah, maybe just the ones you know, but it's not it's definitely a thing. And um, you know, but if that didn't happen by accident, right? Um, you know, really that's a very elite force of firefighters that train hard together, they work out um a lot of experience, like like that is an elite force of firefighters, and so they'll put them in certain situations like following behind the loggers. Sometimes you'll take fire with you and you'll fight fire with fire. And that's a skill set that they have, and that's a a tactic we used during the Greenwood fire that the loggers would come through, they would reduce that fuel load, and then the hotshot crew would follow up when the conditions were right, when the wind was the right direction, the humidities higher, right? You're not doing that during the heat of the day and 30 mile an hour winds, you're doing it sometimes at night at like two o'clock in the morning, and you're bringing fire in there, and then you're further reducing that fuel load between say the echo trail and the fire itself.

Lacey Squier 23:08

Um and is that why they're called hot shots? Because they are actually they're like working maybe with fire, or what do you know anything?

Aaron Kania 23:15

Yeah, they um so you know, uh burning like a burning operation is is one of the tactics. Like obviously they're using chainsaws and shovels and you know, your traditional firefighting tools, hoses, pumps, all of that they're bringing to the table. But then you kind of start then transitioning, you'll have fire engines. And uh shout out to my daughter who's a wildland firefighter. Uh, it's her second year, and she's on a fire engine. And so the engines are bringing more of that, like pumps and hoses. And so what they're doing is say um the big fire, the bear trap fire is north of the echo trail.

Lacey Squier 23:51

So the loggers will be working on the north side of the echo one that's sort of like touching the echo trail or getting approximately.

Aaron Kania 23:57

I think that's the Sioux. Oh the Sioux fire. Yep. But yeah, then that crossed over a little bit. So, but those those loggers will be working on the north side. The hotshots will come along on that north side and bring fire with them. But then you have your fire engine on the south side with the pumps and hoses. So if there's any spot fires, they can spray water on it. They can set up a hose and they can do that. So then you have your traditional firefighters, and then they're supported by things like you know, uh tenders that are bringing like 2,000 gallons of water and refilling them and um all of their support in like fuel trucks, right? So that they don't have to go back to town for gas sometimes. And then, of course, above them is the whole air show, right? So if the loggers are on the north side, the hot shots, the fire trucks are on the south side, those air tankers will and helicopters will be working on that south side to make sure there's no spot fires, they can see it from the air if there's a spot fire. Um, and they could even be using the helicopters for adding extra fire between the echo and the the main fire and and kind of reducing that fire load when conditions are are right. Yep. Um, I mean, all of these things are very risky, obviously. So then, so then that gets back to that fire management organization. You have your your medical staff, your safety officers, you know, your hospital liaisons, EMTs, yeah. Um, and so that whole organization is huge, but it's really so that that firefighter can be most effective with the with the strategy that they're implementing. So, like the what I just outlined is is like all of these individual tactics of this broader strategy of we're gonna catch that fire on the Echo Trail if it threatens to cross the Echo Trail. And yeah, again, back in 2021, the Greenwood, we used Highway One and we stopped. We've used all of these tactics and that strategy to achieve the objective of do not let that fire cross Highway One to the north. Because if it crossed a whole bunch of cabins up there and it could go all the way to Canada, as far as we know.

Lacey Squier 25:58

So

And are any of these tactics different in a Wilderness context?

Lacey Squier 25:59

and are any of these tactics different in a wilderness context?

Aaron Kania 26:04

Yeah, they are. Um, you know, one is you have once the people have been moved out, right, you have fewer structures and infrastructure we call values at risk. So you don't have power lines, pipelines, trains, you know, um houses, radio towers. Like you don't have, you know, human uh infrastructure that you're trying to protect. And luckily, fortunately, in this wilderness, we have a lot more natural features like lakes, streams, creeks, wetlands that you can allow that fire to burn to.

Lacey Squier 26:44

Yep.

Aaron Kania 26:44

And then sometimes you can actually assist the fire getting there on your terms.

Lacey Squier 26:48

Yep.

Aaron Kania 26:49

And so if we go back in time back in 2021 again, the four town fire, and there's actually some really good media out there about um the approach we took on the four town fire. It was like a small 25-acre fire in the middle of a peninsula, and then what we did is we had a hotshot crew, and um, when the weather was right, when the wind conditions were right, and we had the right aircraft, um, we technical term, walked that fire down to the lake shore, down to Fourtown Lake, and within 24 hours we had that fire out. And then we didn't have to use the chainsaws, we didn't have to use the pumps, we didn't have to put firefighters in danger underneath trees that were going to be fallen down. Um so you have sometimes a little bit more space, um, and then you have different features on the landscape. You kind of use slightly different tactics, and obviously not as much mechanical.

Lacey Squier 27:43

That is so much. I mean, that's just like such a complex apparatus with so many moving parts and so many people and so many layers of expertise. It's amazing.

Aaron Kania 27:54

Well, it's um it is, and I think

On the power of delegation

Aaron Kania 27:57

what's beautiful about it is the way you delegate work down to like for instance, my firefighter, my daughter on an engine, right? She knows what she needs to do that day, right? Where she's working, how she's working, and then all of her needs are met. And so you, you know, at the leadership level, you're starting with the objective, hey, keep this fire north of the echo trail. And then your incident commander is translating that into the strategy.

Lacey Squier 28:26

Yep.

Aaron Kania 28:26

And then that strategy is getting translated down and transmitted to the first year firefighter on the ground. Like, here's what you're you are operating this hose nozzle today.

Lacey Squier 28:38

Yep.

Aaron Kania 28:38

And if there's a spot fire over here, you put it out.

Lacey Squier 28:41

Yep.

Aaron Kania 28:42

And so that's how that flow of information. So so you can really build an organization that's looks extremely complex, but when you're within it, everybody kind of knows their role, they know their task, and they they go about doing that task in a fairly safe manner, you know, a very integrated, coordinated manner.

Lacey Squier 29:05

I'm just taking a moment to be in

Every time our community experiences a fire, we learn from it.

Lacey Squier 29:07

awe of that and thinking about last night at the at the public program at the college, um, that was July 19th. We're having this conversation on July 20th. I I did hear so much, you know, multiple people spoke. We heard from people with different levels of or different types of expertise, but the the notion of a team, a partnership, a cooperation, or a bunch of cooperators, a lot of collaborations, like there's so much coordinating going on. And it's truly impressive. Um, it's really impressive.

Aaron Kania 29:41

Yeah, and and maybe I'd um, you know, make a bridge here to the community, right? So our firefighters get a lot of experience every single year across the country, um, are well practiced in this. And I think what's remarkable is is Ely, even the Gunflint Trail, other parts of our community have been through this, you know. Like we kind of started this with Pagami, but I mean, even before that, we know there was other fires. Right. Um, actually, Sue Hustler in 1976, there was a fire there. Um, so in this community, every time there's been a fire, this community has learned from it. And we're applying those lessons learned, you know, as to how you conduct an uh evacuation. And so when the incident management, first responders, and the sheriff say, okay, it's time to go, people have heard that before. They can start understanding what they need to do. And and I would say just looking at the way these evacuations have gone, it has been fairly smooth. Um I've seen it all across the countries and some communities, it's the first time they've had to evacuate, and it's the first time they've had to think about it, they don't know what to expect, the communication channels aren't built, um, their muscle memory isn't there, and it's um a lot of anxiety, uh lot of fear, a lot of um just not comprehending the scale of what's happening, and then wrapping your mind around what am I gonna do? Yeah, wow, I have to do this right now, and I haven't thought about it.

Lacey Squier 31:30

Yeah.

Aaron Kania 31:31

And so I've I always said I I

The body can't go where the mind hasn't been.

Aaron Kania 31:33

had a career in law enforcement before I was in forestry, and and I always said, like, the the body can't go where the mind hasn't already been. Yeah, like you almost have to go through it mentally before you can go through it physically. And if you've done that before, it's quicker. And and we saw that here in Ely and surrounding areas, is because people have thought about this, we've seen it multiple times that it was actually smoother, yeah, um, and less friction and chaos because you know, people have unfortunately had to practice this already.

Lacey Squier 32:10

One of the biggest takeaways from last night's program, and I I I'm just I'm still working on integrating the we still have more summer to come. We have a lot of summer ahead of us. There's more fire season ahead of you than behind you. You know, it just it that message came from every single person who spoke, and I'm feeling some grief about that, right? Because I had a vision of what my summer would be. I had a vision of what my life would be.

How do we pace ourselves for this new reality?

Lacey Squier 32:40

And now I'm just trying to, you know, pace myself for this kind of relatively new relationship to fire and wildfire and and how you know, I just I don't want to be dramatic, but also it's like, okay, like this will happen again. It's happened before, it will happen again, and it's still dry.

Aaron Kania 33:08

Yeah, and I I think that's the unknown, right? Is is what's hard that you have this looming presence on the landscape that you know could really wake up and move at any point, almost at any point. And um, I I've seen it before. I think again, this is a lesson learned. Uh, I was up on a fire in Alaska and they got four inches of rain, and everybody was like, Yay, the fire's out, we're done. Like, let's go home. And they did, and then it stopped raining. Yeah. And in this boreal forest, it if you have 10 days of dry, it's ready to burn again.

Lacey Squier 33:45

That was another big message, right? If it's not raining, it's drying. Yes. And one inch of rain can buy you two to three days. But right now, this fire is burning 24 inches into the ground. Yeah. Like this isn't there's

This is an abnormal situation, right?

Lacey Squier 34:00

this is an abnormal situation, right?

Aaron Kania 34:06

Yeah. Uh so there's the um historic variability, right? So if you go back in history, like we were talking with Bud Heinzelman, Indigenous fire, there was a lot of fire on the land then. It was repeated, it was often. And what that did was it kept up with you know the the forest, right? And our forests weren't nearly as thick back then. Um, there wasn't as much brush, as much litter on the ground, we called slash, you know, fallen trees, like those repeated fires, low-intensity fires had the habit of cleaning up the forest.

Lacey Squier 34:42

Yep.

Aaron Kania 34:43

Right.

Lacey Squier 34:43

And a consistent practice of low-intensity fire.

Aaron Kania 34:46

Yeah, and I I think the best way to wrap your mind around this is like farming, right? So, I mean, parts of Minnesota, you go out there and and it's a farmland, and you're like, wow, that's what it is. And but it's because that farmer's out there plowing every year and mowing and tilling and harvesting, right? Is what's maintaining that as a farmland. Well, if you all of a sudden stop farming and you go a hundred years without farming, as we know in like southern Minnesota, there's gonna be oak trees and everything else, and you don't just one day say, Oh, you know what, this was a farm, I'm gonna farm again. And you don't just take the plow and plant. You have to now do something different. You have to manage that land to the point where it's a farm again.

Lacey Squier 35:37

Yeah, and so there's a transition period.

Aaron Kania 35:39

There's a transition, and that's exactly what we did here is we excluded fire from the landscape. And I use that term specifically, fire exclusion versus fire suppression, because fire suppression, you're putting fires out. There's a lightning strike, you put that out. That's fire suppression. Fire exclusion is you're not adding fire, like the indigenous burning. So not only did we suppress lightning cause fires, but we also did not allow the Ojibwe community to do their traditional burning. So we took both causes of fire out of that landscape. And it's just like farming, like we stopped plowing, we stopped allowing fire on the landscape, and so the forest responded accordingly, which is thicker, right? And then really the only tool outside the wilderness is logging, yep, is the primary tool. And then there is a small component of prescribed fire that we brought back in under very um controlled terms, um, you know, with with a specific heavily monitored, yep, yep, and staffed and and with the right weather conditions, and

A risk deferred

Aaron Kania 36:43

even that, there's risk, right? Um, you know, there are occasions where prescribed fire doesn't go according to plan.

Lacey Squier 36:48

Yep.

Aaron Kania 36:49

And um, you know, so that's the risk that makes it really challenging. But um another term is uh risk deferred. So by not allowing fire on the landscape, we've deferred that risk to someone else. Well, now we are the ones that are seeing the consequences of all of that risk that has been deferred in the past, and even myself, that some of that's on my shoulders, right? I've made decisions in the in the last years that hey, the conditions aren't right, we have to put this fire out. And you know, I can look at the landscape, I can look at where these fires are, and I can see fires that we've suppressed, right? With good decision making. Um, I don't regret those decisions, but at the same time, because we put those fires out, we deferred the risk. Yeah, well, now we're seeing the consequences of those decisions.

Lacey Squier 37:42

Yeah.

Aaron Kania 37:42

So yeah, that's a lot. The bill's come and do. The bill is come and do, yeah. Yeah. The again, Mother Nature knows where she wants fire, and yeah, and she'll have it there eventually.

Lacey Squier 37:56

And I do still, I mean, there's just a balance to be struck,

Gratitude to the firefighters

Lacey Squier 38:00

and I remain grateful that we have 700 wildland firefighters and these many layers of agencies, these many apparatuses, all these different people and and efforts working to, you know, protect the values, protect the people and and the property, and and you know, as of right now, and and kind of as a standing rule, like the community, you know, unless you're uh evacuated, you're you're living here. We live here. This is our our home and

Weather this started this fire, and weather is going to put it out???

Lacey Squier 38:30

and and we're gonna be vigilant. And you know, they say weather started this fire and whether we'll put it out, which means that we're gonna be maybe navigating fire season for a while yet. But that also means we have to learn to we have to find a way to go on with our day-to-day lives.

Aaron Kania 38:48

Yeah.

Lacey Squier 38:49

And keep moving forward.

Aaron Kania 38:50

Yeah, I really want to explore that. Weather started this fire and weather will put it out. Um there's a lot in between that though, right? So the weather that found the spark that started this fire, the baseline conditions in that forest are what we created, right? So it's not just weather alone, it's all of those activities that we either did or didn't do.

Lacey Squier 39:17

Yeah, because there's like the fire movement is largely the function of this triangle, fuels, weather, and topography.

Aaron Kania 39:25

Yeah.

Lacey Squier 39:26

And the fuels aspect is what you're exactly.

Aaron Kania 39:29

So, you know, I I think of so we've done timber sales and followed them up with prescribed fires. Yeah right. So again, going back to Greenwood, the pitcha like the prescribed fire, right? That was a timber sale thin the forest, and then we followed that up with a prescribed burn. When the Greenwood fire got to that point, it stopped.

Lacey Squier 39:49

Yep.

Aaron Kania 39:50

Right. So it wasn't weather. You know it worked. Yeah, it wasn't necessarily weather that put that fire out. It was the management activities that happened long before the weather that ended up causing that fire to act the way it did when it was at that pitch of lake prescribed burn. And I think even here, right, so we have prescribed fires on the land. We have Hegman, Slim Lake, that we just did. Did we just do those in 24, 23 years or or maybe yeah, I think 2024 we did um Hegman and Slim Lake. Um, you know, in the Fernburg project, we have a whole lot of prescribed fire that's um in that plan, right? That the Forest Service will eventually work towards. Well, you know, those are the the things that we do. Um, all up and down the echo trail. There's all sorts of timber sales, there's all sorts of prescribed fire, and there's all sorts of activity that took place. And even going back to that firewise, there's a whole lot of landowners that did a whole lot of work around their properties. So it's not exactly just weather. Yeah, it's weather plus the fuel, and then that history that led to that fuel. Like even going back to that tree that's 400 years old, right? There was a fire 400 years ago that is changing the fire activity today. Yeah, it's very complex and very beautiful to drive through the forest and look and see and then think how fire does it. Um, again, I brought my map and I think about this campsite up on um Iron Lake that's now impacted. It was a five-star campsite, right? And then just walking around that forest is like a beautiful forest, but I could really envision what it would look like for fire to burn through there in some different scenarios. And and I hope that's one of the places where the fire maybe came through at night, yeah. You know, in a low-intensity fire. And I would love to go back to that campsite and you know see the blueberries, um, you know, and and just see how that forest is responding to how that fire moved through that area.

Observer & Dallas's wisdom

Lacey Squier 42:04

I will say I had um I had, you know, this past year we had the Ely Film Festival, Boundary Writers Connect was the sponsor for a film called Observer, a really profound documentary about, you know, what are we observing, what do we see? And um we had a special guest, um Dallas Hudson was here, and he's a phonologist. And he lives in Minnesota, northern Minnesota, and like so many people have, he reached out to me and said, How are you doing? And I was in the moment of in the moment I was feeling sad, and I was feeling sad about the pines and the high-intensity fires and the change of of landscape. And he was like, the landscape will be fine. The people are the ones who don't know how to change. Um it was it was an interesting moment, you know, because he's right that his years, his lifetime of watching nature change day by day has helped him see how resilient nature is and how adaptable and how you know we don't know, you know, maybe the same exact thing won't come back and it will have changed, but that doesn't mean it's um fundamentally broken or lost.

Aaron Kania 43:17

So yeah, for sure. For sure.

Lacey Squier 43:20

I yeah it's a comforting thought.

Aaron Kania 43:22

Yeah, and I think you know, you you have some more guests in some other parts of the series, and I think you're gonna get into that transition from the natural world to the built environment.

Lacey Squier 43:31

Yep.

Aaron Kania 43:32

And when you make that transition, the considerations are much different.

Lacey Squier 43:37

Yeah.

Aaron Kania 43:37

You know, I I think it's one thing to think hypothetically about how forests are impacted by fire, but it's a whole nother thing when communities and houses are are affected by fire, and and that's for you to explore with others.

Lacey Squier 43:53

Well, Aaron, it's been really nice to talk with you. I I really appreciate, you know, especially this sort of rundown of the the chain of command and who's doing what, understanding a little bit better about those tactics. Um it's really, you know, I really appreciate

Again, GRATITUDE TO OUR FIREFIGHTERS!

Lacey Squier 44:10

you are the person in my life that I know the best who is the most knowledgeable about fire and um wildland fire management. So I really appreciate you taking the time to be here today and speak with me and offer some some zoomed-out perspective.

Aaron Kania 44:26

Yeah, it's it's wonderful. And I would say though, um I am always learning and the community of firefighters we have. I am so grateful for the people that are here and knowing a lot of them and their capabilities. I really feel that we have the best people helping us out, and that brings me a lot of comfort. So thanks for our time today. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

Lacey Squier 44:54

Yeah, and yeah, I mean, forever and ever, thank you to our wildland firefighters and the the agencies and the logistical folks who make it happen. I mean, just seeing the like, what is it, the what's the word? Like the the livery or whatever, the the food station set out at the vermilion college.

Aaron Kania 45:15

And oh my gosh, huge.

Lacey Squier 45:18

Okay, yeah. We do need to wrap up. Thank you, Erin Kenya listeners. Thank you for listening. Brett, thank you for producing. Nick Allen, thank you for the music.

Please give us a 5-star review :)

Lacey Squier 45:27

Um, if you got something out of this episode, if you appreciated it, please share it with a friend or consider giving us a five-star review. It helps us um, it helps get this podcast out to more people. The conversation about the local um current 2026 July Lightning wildfires will continue. And um see you next time.