Cloquet Fire of 1918: Could It Happen Again?

CLOQUET, Minn. – The University of Minnesota has a Research Forestry facility in Cloquet. Lane Johnson is one of the Research Foresters based there.  He explained that fire can be beneficial when it’s done as a prescribed burn. There are plants and trees that can benefit from fires such as the Red Pine.

“It reduces fuels so that when you have a hot, dry, droughty Fall, like the season we’ve kind of been in. If a fire does occur, it’s something that can be managed or approached, rather than firefighting resources needing to step back and sort of get out of the way,” Johnson said.

In 1918, the fire started from a train in Cloquet that had a spark shooting off of it. The railroad can still cause fires, but because of land development, these fires are generally much smaller and easier to control. So a fire like what happened in Maui is not likely to happen here, according to Johnson.

The Fond Du Lac Tribe works with the Forestry Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs to ensure plants that are important to them, are helped to grow.

Paul Priestley, the Wild Land Fuels Specialist for the Fond du Lac Band, said, “One of the priorities of my position is to try to work with our partners, like the University and with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to bring fire back to these forests safely for the fire-dependent stands.”

Johnson showed a cross-section of a tree in Cloquet that showed when major fires occurred.