480 acre wildfire destroys home, some grave coverings
By Jeni Jewell
Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 6:19 p.m.
Read more: Local
L'ANSE TWP -- Charred underbrush and pockets of smoke covered roughly 480 acres around Pinery Lake in L'Anse Township on Thursday, just hours after flames, some six feet high, consumed the area.
The fire raged throughout Wednesday night, mostly uncontained, before subsiding mid-morning. One home was destroyed, but no one was injured.
Most of the land is owned by the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, so the Bureau of Indian Affairs is overseeing the scene.
"It's actually going through the Pinery Ski Lake Cross Country Ski Trails," said Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fire Management Officer, Will Wiggins. "They do a lot of cross country skiing there. There's pine, hardwoods, some low-land."
Several wooden grave markings in the cemetery on Indian Cemetery Road were destroyed by the fire.
What started the fire is still a mystery, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs called an investigator, who arrived on scene this afternoon.
According to a D.N.R. fire supervisor, a passerby called 9-1-1 yesterday after spotting the flames around 3:30 p.m.
"The winds were erratic," said D.N.R. Fire Supervisor Rich Ahnen. "We had spot fires. The big thing is the erratic winds. You don't know where it's going sometimes."
While one structure was lost, fire crews were able to save others like a log cabin. Baraga firefighters along with the D.N.R. started a control burn around it. As flames came closer, they mopped it all up, preventing the structure from going up.
The 80 firefighters on scene were able to contain 80 percent of the fire on Thursday, hoping to finish digging a fire line around the perimeter on Friday.
The D.N.R. and Bureau of Indian Affairs received assistance from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services in Seney, the Hiawatha National Forest, Ottawa National Forest, Baraga, L'Anse, Aura, Arvon, and Tribe Wildlife Volunteer Fire Departments, the Baraga County Sheriff's Department, the Michigan State Police, the American Red Cross, and the Baraga County Office of Emergency Measures.
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