UPDATED 5/19/2016 2215 PDT (Seattle Time)

INCIDENT SUMMARY

A prescribed fire intentionally set by U.S. Forest Service to clear fire fuels around the North and the West sides of Foss Lake, near Hwy 169, did not expect to escape its fire containment lines set by fire crews.

After escaping the fire perimeter, The Superior National Forest Fire Managers officially called the Prescribed Fire as a Wildfire around 1400 hours CDT this afternoon calling in additional assistance.  The Forest called in additional fire crews and Air Tankers, which were on-scene in a short amount of time.

LOCATION

The fire is also located one mile SW edge of Burntside Lake; North of Foss Lake and South of Crab Lake on US Forest land managed by the Duluth, Minnesota District.

FIRE SUPPRESSION RESOURCES

Aviation

Aircraft on scene:  8 aircraft (unknown type)

Crews assigned to Incident:  40 crews.

Earlier this afternoon Tankers made good progressive with water drops.

A plane went up to gather data on the size and containment but due to heavy smoke in the area, they will have to wait until Friday when the heavy smoke has dissipated.

FIRE STATUS

It is currently 00:15 hours CDT in Diluth, Minnesota and the fire has laid down for the evening.

There is no known number of acres.

There is no known containment status.

THREATS

There are no threats to nearby Ely, Winton, Turner or Soundan communities.

No structures or injuries have been reported at the time of this post.

SOCIAL MEDIA 

Please refer to this Fire as #FossLakeFire and #mnfire as being largely used by those in Fire and Media; also used by the those referring to the fire.

There are no photos showing the fire from the USFS viewpoint but there are others tweeting the info.

(c) 2016 The #NWFireBlog