Helicopters are ferrying out tons of fire hose, water pumps and personal gear from the Cavity Lake fire, as efforts switch from fighting the fire to watching it die and making sure it doesn't recover.
Later today, all but two 20-person ground crews will have left the fire, down from more than 500 people fighting the fire at its peak.
Officially, the fire is 95 percent contained. But there is little actual firefighting under way, and there are no plans to complete a 100 percent perimeter because of the rugged terrain in that area, fire command spokesman Ron Fanow said.
Helicopters are hauling more equipment than dropping water, although an occasional hotspot is still detected by infrared sensors, and water is dropped.
Water-dropping airplanes haven't been near the fire for more than a week.
Responsibility for the fire is being handed back to local leaders from the Superior National Forest today, as national team leaders leave for mandatory rest and more urgent fires.
While its effects will be seen for decades, and while local crews will continue to monitor the area, the Cavity Lake fire is about to fade into black.
``They may not declare it fully contained and controlled and out until it snows,'' Fanow said. ``But things are winding down. It's an incremental downsizing of both suppression efforts and support.''
On Monday, helicopters removed 21,000 pounds of gear from the fire area inside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.
``They took out something like 38 canoes that were left in there from the fire crews,'' Fanow said. ``Everything has to come out now that took weeks to bring in.''
Within days, assuming no newflareups occur, firefighting activity will be reduced to aerial reconnaissance. Several teams of Forest Service experts are monitoring the effects of the fire on the ecology and social aspects, such as campsites, of the forest.
``They're already bringing in new equipment like (latrines) to get ready for those areas reopen,'' Superior National Forest spokeswoman Kris Reichenbach said.
The fire was started by lightning in drought conditions on July 14 and grew rapidly on several windy days, threatening the nearby Gunflint Trail and its homes, lodges and campgrounds.
Aerial water bombardment, along with cooler, calmer and wetter weather helped slow and eventually stop the fire, but not until it burned about 50 square miles. It was the region's largest fire in decades.
The fire burned quickly through dead and downed trees felled by the 1999 windstorm in the area. But it slowed when it reached areas intentionally burned by the Forest Service since the windstorm to reduce fuel for such wildfires.
The fire saved Superior National Forest crews a lot of work this fall -- more than 10,000 burned acres had been scheduled to be burned intentionally. Fire experts are re-evaluating where to start intentional blazes, now focusing on areas near the middle Gunflint Trail, where extensive tracts of blowdown remain.
Only 10 of 89 BWCAW entry points remain closed, while all lodges, campgrounds and other businesses remain open. More canoe routes near the burned area will be reopened by week's end, Reichenbach said.
No one was hurt and no private property was damaged by the fire, which has cost $10.2 million to battle so far.
Campfires remain banned in the blowdown area of the BWCAW. The Minnesota Interagency Fire Center in Grand Rapids on Tuesday reported that conditions remain drier than usual across the northern forested region of the state and that fire danger remains high.Duluth News Tribune
