Courtesy Photo | Michigan DNR
Dean Minett was the first to spot the Duck Lake Fire, in his role as a fire detection pilot for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
This aerial shot shows the 11-mile-long Duck Lake Fire approaching Lake Superior.
(Photo Courtesy of Michigan DNR/Air 4 Pilot Dean Minett)
Air tankers on loan from Minnesota capture water from inland lakes to
fight the Duck Lake Fire in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
(Photo Courtesy
of Michigan DNR/Air 4 Pilot Dean Minett)
This aerial shot shows the 11-mile-long Duck Lake Fire approaching Lake
Superior.
(Photo Courtesy of Michigan DNR/Air 4 Pilot Dean Minett)
More equipment is readied to battle the Duck Lake Fire.
(Photo Courtesy of Michigan DNR/Air 4 Pilot Dean Minett)
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Upper Peninsula residents hear the eerie sound of helicopters headed to
fight the Duck Lake Fire. More than 91 firefighters and equipment from
as far away as Minnesota are battling the Duck Lake Fire.
(Photo
courtesy of Newberry radio station Eagle 96.7)
Smoke is seen for miles from the Duck Lake Fire that started Wednesday
and continues into the Memorial Day holiday weekend.
(Photo courtesy of
Newberry radio station Eagle 96.7)
Fire rages in north of Newberry in the Upper Peninsula.
(Photo Courtesy of Michigan DNR/Air 4 Pilot Dean Minett)
This May 25 satellite image shows the broad smoke plume of the Duck Lake
Fire pushing east across Whitefish Bay and into southern Ontario. This
eastward push of the fire and the smoke was caused by winds shifting to
the west-northwest this morning behind a cold front.
More than 91 firefighters and equipment from as far away as Minnesota
are battling the Duck Lake Fire. This aerial shot shows the 11-mile-long
Duck Lake Fire approaching Lake Superior.
(Photo courtesy of Newberry
radio station Eagle 96.7)
More than 91 firefighters and equipment from as far away as Minnesota
are battling the Duck Lake Fire. This aerial shot shows the 11-mile-long
Duck Lake Fire approaching Lake Superior.
(Photo courtesy of Newberry
radio station Eagle 96.7)
Michigan DNR fire detection pilot Dean Minett was flying his Cessna
182 back from Sault Ste. Marie on Wednesday, May 23, to make a fuel stop
at Newberry Airport.
His plan: Gas up and head back out to scan the remote eastern Upper
Peninsula forests for any flare-ups in the wake of several lightning
strikes in recent days.
The fire danger this time of year is heightened anyway, but the mild
winter and months of drought meant the ground held little moisture. All
you'd need is a lightning strike, a little wind and next thing you know,
you could have a serious wildfire.
Minett, a former ambulance pilot who's had his license for 46 years,
is meticulous about the maintenance of his dependable single-engine
Cessna. Even though it's a 1975 model, it looks like it's five years
old. New leather seats. A flashy color scheme. It represents the DNR
well, he says.
And it's modified to help him do his job. The high wings, allowing
good ground visibility, have been lengthened and reshaped so he can fly
slow and low to the ground. "It's about as close to a helicopter as you
can get," he chuckles.
That capability is crucial to Minett's job in detecting fires, directing ground crews and documenting the fire patterns.
His photos and videos of various fires are studied by the DNR and
sometimes released to the media. Detail guy that he is, Minett has been
bugging the DNR to get an HD/high resolution camera so he can provide
better images. But it hasn't been a priority in these tight economic
times.
The plane's design allows him to swoop in so he can see if there are
any two-tracks or ways to get ground crews into backcountry that is
thick with pine and undergrowth. In constant radio contact, Minett tells
them to turn here, go around that pond, head toward 10 o'clock -
whatever it takes to get the crews to a fire scene.
Firefighters call him their eyes in the sky. His ability to survey
the landscape is a huge improvement over the fire towers of old.
"About 95 percent of fires are spotted by aircraft," Minett said.
"Some may argue with me on that. But early detection is the name of the
game. We're detection pilots. My aircraft does not have any contact with
the fire. But our communication is paramount. And if we don't have
ground troops, we're just a pretty airplane up there flying around."
What Minett didn't know on May 23 is that he would soon face a fire
where early detection and all the fire-fighting manpower in the world
simply wouldn't make a difference.
On this Wednesday, he was within 30 miles of Newberry when he saw a
curl of smoke. He knew he had enough gas to check it out, but when he
got within five miles, he saw a more serious looking situation to his
left near Duck Lake.
Using GPS, he called in to dispatch in Marquette using his ID - "Air
4" named after his DNR District 4 in Luce County - and reported the
first fire's location. He told them he was headed to the second fire to
check it out. It looked more serious - flames 8 to 10 feet high in a
stand of pines amid a marshy area "in about the most inaccessible place
in the eastern UP."
Once Minett locates and sizes up a fire, his next job becomes
tactical - recommending how much equipment may be needed and getting the
crew in there to fight it.
From above, he told crews what roads to turn down in the remote area
and confirmed they'd need to unload the bulldozer and force their way
in. It took two hours to get the crew to the fire site.
"The last size-up I heard on the radio - and I always like to hear
this - is 'Yeah, we've got a line all the way around this." The fire
stood at about 2 acres and the crew signaled they no longer needed air
support.
On Thursday, the temperature hovered around 80 and the relative
humidity was low. The wind was picking up. When Minett got up in the
air, he immediately started checking for lightning strikes and all
looked good. But he radioed that Duck Lake was putting up a lot of
smoke. Three firefighters were dispatched to widen a trail to get in
more equipment.
He headed to another nearby fire, the Seney Fire, that ground crews
had been working for a few days. They wanted to ensure it didn't jump a
drainage ditch over M-28 north of Seney Refuge.
Minett spent some time directing them where they needed to do battle,
and then turned back to check on the Duck Lake trio around 2 p.m. He
didn't like what he saw. "I could see a smoke plume 20 miles out in hazy
sky. That's bad."
The firefighters were trapped - the fire blew across their trail and
their only obvious egress would be to swim a pond created from a beaver
dam. Minett got them to safety by pointing them to an open area.
And then all hell broke loose.
The hot southerly wind picked up embers into the tops of jack, red
and white pine trees and the fire started crowning, moving at a pace of
1.5 to 2 miles an hour north. That doesn't sound fast, considering
prairie fires can move 10 miles an hour and overtake people trying to
escape. But for a forest fire, that speed is rare; the Duck Lake Fire
will be remembered for its speed and heat.
As he approached the fire at one point, "I could feel the radiation a
half mile away, so I knew I didn't want to get any closer ... They
asked me about bringing in fire bombers, but those guys, they wouldn't
be able to get close enough to do anything and they wouldn't put
themselves into that kind of danger."
As it raced north, it was only about a mile wide, and Minett took
comfort in thinking Pike Lake, ringed by quaint cabins and year-round
homes, would be spared.
But about 8 p.m. the winds took a destructive shift out of the west,
pushing the fire past the Big Two-Hearted River and into Little Lake
Harbor. And the eastern flank fingered out and burned several Pike Lake
properties.
By 9 p.m. the fire had raced more than 11 miles north, scorching 21,135 acres. Only Lake Superior could stop it.
"This is one of those fires that you couldn't go in and attack when
it's flying like that. You evacuate the people. You get 'em out and you
get 'em to safety. Then you have no option but to watch it. It's kind of
like the Titanic: You could do nothing about it. You watch this thing
and monitor it until it kind of collapses. And then you bring in the
firebombers."
On Friday, Minett and a DNR manager took an air tour of the fire.
They saw large patches of black and large patches of green south of Pike
Lake. From County Road 414 north, "it's as black as you can paint a
picture." As they flew above the beach rimming Lake Superior, they
spotted a piece of driftwood - still burning.
Rainbow Lodge at the mouth of the Two-Hearted, a destination for
sportsmen and for generations of families who would go there every year
for their up-north fix - gone, along with 137 homes, garages and other
buildings in the fire zone.
"It's gut wrenching when you get up around Rainbow Lodge," said Minett. "When I saw that, it looked like the
pictures you see of Hiroshima.
It's just ashen remains. No structures left. This was like it went
through a ceramic kiln. There's a bulldozer there, and it melted the
engine block, and on the ground you could see this molten mass of
aluminum run 20 feet down the hill."
Fires are hot. This fire was beyond hot, rivaled perhaps by the 1980 Mack Lake Fire,
which records show produced an estimated 3 trillion BTUs of energy, about the same as nine Hiroshima bombs.
The DNR, Michigan State Police, Luce County Emergency Services
Management and others started assembling equipment and people to fight
what
some call a "career fire."
Minett's role was elevated to directing the air fleet and guiding the "troops."
On Friday, Air 3, a DNR plane out of Escanaba, flew in to join the
fight. Two CL215s - tanker planes that can scoop up 1,500 gallons at a
time - arrived from Minnesota. On Sunday four Blackhawk helicopters
arrived from the Air National Guard based in Grand Ledge, ready with
buckets that can hold 760 gallons a shot. Also part of the "air show": A
heavy Helo - the big daddy - from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
with its 2,600-gallon capability.
The operation has the intricacy of a military attack, but not the
luxury of planning. Minett spent the next several days flying above the
aircraft, telling them what sector most needed their watery loads. An
"attack pilot" closer to the action would tell colleagues how to
approach the dump area - hitting the fire on the upwind side or banking
in on a curve downwind to avoid the smoke. Then he'd tell them that the
next bucket should be dumped a wingspan to the right or left.
All this happens with multiple aircraft in a "daisy chain." Minett
ensures they're at a safe distance from one another and yet get the job
done.
When not directing the air show, he'd swoop closer to document the
fire with photos and videos. Many would be featured by news outlets in
the coming days. Evacuees and area residents lept on those photos,
hoping to see if their property was pictured or if their favorite
campground was untouched.
He was bothered by the quality of the photos and video he shot. He'd
set the camera wrong at one point. And darn, he wished he'd had that
high-def camera he'd been requesting.
Media and others asked to go up with him on fly-arounds but he
wouldn't allow it. "I've tried in the past. People say, 'Oh I can handle
it,' but one hour into the mission they're finding their breakfast
again. I carried bags for just that reason."
Plus, he needed to focus on the task at hand, especially when he's
500 feet above the trees, flying with one hand, controlling the throttle
with his knee and holding the camera with his other hand.
"It's almost a comical scene but it's the only way that I can get
this done," Minett said. "Some pilots would say, 'Oh my goodness, this
guy is an accident waiting to happen.' But my one goal is to get back in
the evening."
When he touched down each night, his Cessna smelled like a campfire, even though he'd done all he could to avoid the smoke.
Two days ago, as he directed the Blackhawks fighting flames by Little
Lake Harbor, he was scouring the area and blinked at what he saw near
Bodi Lake, an area of more cottages east of the fire scene. "I can't
believe my eyes. I see a curl of smoke out there and it's already
involved, right in the middle of red pine and jackpine fuels."
He immediately radioed the Blackhawks to leave Little Lake and dip
out of Bodi Lake, and douse the freshly rising smoke. "These guys were
there within 60 seconds. They made a swimming pool out of the place,"
Minett laughed.
It took him an hour and a half to direct ground crews to the remote
spot, where they verified it was a lightning strike. The fire area was
only 50 feet in diameter. Water lay all over the access road.
He thinks about that incident. If he'd been at the south end of the
fire, it's possible the smoke could have flamed into something much more
serious. It reminds him to be ever watchful, even as the Duck Lake Fire
now is 71 percent contained and the DNR feels comfortable enough to let
evacuees return to check their residences today.
There will be more fires that Minett will spot, although he'll
remember this one. He'll get the troops in and he'll do that balancing
act of steering, throttling and shooting images so the DNR and the
public know what firefighters are facing.
But next time, it'll be easier. A new HD camera arrived Thursday.
Story, photos, and video: http://www.mlive.com
