It’s taken Leanne Langeberg at least 15 years to pick up all her firefighting knowledge.
Langeberg is the public information officer for the Minnesota Incident Command System, the state’s interagency emergency response group, and the Minnesota Interagency Fire Center in Grand Rapids.
“I have the advantage of being able to go out to different places and be involved with this process and hear people talk about it over and over and over again,” she said.
“It is not an easy concept, by any means, for a general member of the public to understand. Firefighting is a science.”
Three large wildfires began in St. Louis County earlier this week, with the first sparking Sunday, May 11. The fires erupted amid extremely dangerous fire conditions, with several days of unseasonably high temperatures, low humidity and gusty winds.
The Camp House Fire near Brimson and the Jenkins Creek Fire about 8 miles farther northwest are the largest as of Friday — both around 15,000 acres, about the size of Cass Lake.
The smaller Munger Shaw Fire near Cotton burned about 1,600 acres. That’s about the size of Fish Hook Lake in Park Rapids, Kekekabic Lake in Ely or Round Lake in Nisswa, for comparison.
As these large wildfires burn in Minnesota for the first time since the Greenwood Fire in 2021, Langeberg shared some of the basics of wildland firefighting.
What is containment?
Containment percentage is often the second number wildfire watchers look for after acreage.
Containment has nothing to do with how much of the wildfire is burning or out; rather, the percentage indicates how much of the fire perimeter is wrapped by a control line, often a “blackline.”
“It’s getting all the vegetations cleared down to the bare mineral soil, so that there’s no longer fuel for that fire to push out of its original footprint,” Langeberg explained.
Lines are created by heavy equipment, like bulldozers, and large crews of firefighters working with shovels and axes.
The line is usually 100-200 feet from the fire perimeter, so that if embers blow, the line will still hold. But that can vary significantly based on conditions.
“Sometimes the landscape is just too dangerous to get into,” Langeberg said. “So that containment may look a lot bigger surrounding the fire.”
Crews will also use natural barriers, like rocky outcrops or rivers, as part of their lines.
Containment is also an assurance that the fire footprint will not expand further.
“They’re working to make it a solid containment line, that once the fire within the natural footprint burns up to that containment line, it’ll stop, and it’ll hold,” she said.
Why are the Northern Minnesota fires still 0% contained?
After several days of firefighting, the Camp House and Jenkins Creek fires are 0% contained as of Friday. The Munger Shaw Fire jumped to 25% Thursday.
Langeberg explained it usually takes several days for containment to start to increase around larger fires because of factors like weather and terrain.
“It’s not a process that happens in just one day,” she said. “When you have the conditions that we’ve had in the past couple of days, winds are always going to be concerning, so we want to make sure that our firefighters can go home at night every night.”
In the initial days of firefighting, there’s a lot of assessment and planning happening as experts work to get a better picture of the fire and determine the best ways to control it while keeping firefighters safe.
You can see this in the Wednesday update, just a few days after the fires began, from the team managing the Camp House and Jenkins Creek Fire.
“Firefighters will be assessing fire suppression control-line locations and tactics that present the best opportunity for success. Aircraft will again be used to help slow fire spread and protect private property and structures where possible,” the update stated.
“Public and firefighter safety are the highest priority and ground access could be limited due to swamps, rivers, and lack of forest roads in the area.”
How crews are fighting the fires
In the first 24-48 hours when a fire is burning fast and uncontrollably fire, firefighters conduct their “initial attack,” from the ground and from the sky with air support.
Water and fire retardant don’t put fires out, but they help cool down active flames so firefighters can get in and begin to address hot spots to prevent the fire from reigniting.
Hot spots are particularly active areas that are likely to reignite or spread, such as burning stumps or smoldering dead trees.
Langeberg compared it to a campfire. Your fire may no longer be burning, but there’s still hot embers that will continue to hold heat until they’re stirred up and doused with cool water.
Crews have also spent time constructing control lines since the fires began, according to incident updates, but were likely limited due to the dry and windy conditions causing the fire to actively spread.
On Friday, Brimson Complex firefighters were continuing to build lines and planning to “direct attack,” or directly extinguish burning fuels, in that area as conditions allowed.
As conditions calm down, firefighters will also start to reinforce the control by constructing blackline, Langeberg explained.
As the firefighting progresses, crews will continue to “mop up,” or cool hot spots using hand tools like shovels and hoses.
“It becomes a big operation and a lot of equipment,” Langeberg said. “But the work that the firefighters are doing is working to cool down the hot spots that sit close to the containment line, and they’ll progressively work their way into the fire to assure that anything holding heat, they’ve got that cooled down and out before the next percentage of containment.”
