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by Marshall Helmberger The U.S. Forest Service is still looking for a few good fire seasons. With two years already completed out of a seven-year plan to burn approximately 75,000 acres of blowdown stemming from the July 4, 1999, storm, the Forest Service has been able to burn less than 5,000 acres. For the most part, it's been wet weather that has hindered the agency's prescribed burning plans, according to fire coordinator Jim Hinds, who is based in Ely. While conditions started out well in the first half of September this year, the cold, wet pattern that hit the area later in the month and that has continued through October has put fire conditions well outside the range needed to fully burn all the woody material left in the wake of the 1999 blowdown. Limited federal resources also proved an issue this year, as massive western fires sapped both firefighting funds and manpower from around the country, leaving little remaining for less urgent projects elsewhere. "We were clipped a little by that in early September," said Hinds. "We had a lot of people out west. Even if the weather had cooperated, we probably couldn't have burned even if we'd wanted to." Still, the Forest Service did manage to burn approximately 3,700 acres near the Gunflint Trail. Burns planned for the Ely area were not completed this year, as had been hoped. Last year, the Forest Service completed about 1,000 acres in planned burns. While two wet years have put the Forest Service's prescribed burning plans well behind schedule, Hinds said the agency isn't worried yet, because the business of fire tends to be cyclical. "We're in one of those damp cycles right now," he said. But when drier weather returns, Hinds said Forest Service fire crews should be able to catch up quickly. "Under the right conditions, we can burn 5,000-6,000 acres a day," said Hinds. And the Forest Service has been successful, said Hinds, in completing many of the smaller, high-priority burns that were located near homes and resorts. Those burns are more complicated, time-consuming, and require more resources than the larger burns the agency plans to conduct later in the seven-year plan. "We're getting to a point now where most burns will be technically easier," he said. |