MN wildfires: Full news conference in Ely

We do have updates that we emailed out to our list this morning, and those are hard copy right here. I'll make them available over here, so grab those before you leave. We have a full lineup today, so we appreciate you being here. We have two incident commanders here to give you updates across the forest. We have Paul from the wildfire section, manager of the DNR. We have Phil, our incident meteorologist, and he is amazing to be able to explain this weather pattern to the public. We have Josh. Paul. He is new. He is an air resource specialist or advisor, so we're going to be able to talk about air today as well. So, what we ask of you to hold your questions until we went through that agenda, and then we will open up the questions to the media, and then we'll get this show on the road right now. First up is Mike Hill from MNIX Incident Command. All right. Here you go. Good afternoon, everybody. Mike Hill with the Minnesota Type 3 Incident Command Team, better known as MNIX. I'm responsible for 11 wildfires west of Echo Lake and east of US Highway 53. There is a geographic area that is outside the wilderness, and those fires are relatively small, quite a bit smaller than some of the other fires in the area, and so right now our Type 3 organization is managing those 11 fires. Status update on the fires range from each individual incident, but we're making progress. We're working towards containment on all of them. We have been able to get some resources in from in-state and from out-of-state. These are really important. Our strategy there is to keep these as small as possible so that they don't threaten the areas around them and the values that are at risk associated with those fires. Probably the most notable value there in the area of our fires is the community of Crane Lake. The county road that goes north into Crane Lake, which is a one-way in, one-way out road, the community there has been supportive, and they are currently in a ready status, but we've been primarily focusing on the fires that have the potential to threaten that community and some of the other values such as the road, the road being critically important for public safety. Some of the challenges we're facing, just the fire activity is pretty substantial. Our firefighters are putting in long, hard hours, and we are doing our best there in supporting their welfare. The community has been incredibly supportive with all sorts of outreach, mementos, and things of support. Some of the vendors in Crane Lake we're using as local vendors for some of our logistical support for food and lodging. My log's chief said it's the first time in his career he's ever put firefighters on a houseboat for lodging, and that speaks to the uniqueness of Crane Lake. That's not to say that Crane Lake's not the only value out there, though. We've got private infrastructure, we've got U.S. Forest Service, some of the recreational features around there, and so, overall, we're making good progress. The work is, we've installed containment lines on some, but not all, of our incidents, and we've got folks on the ground now working with aircraft and working to secure, and then hopefully we get to the mop-up stage here soon. Somebody's background online, apparently, is sharing his dog nationwide. Jason Loomis, this is NEMO Incident Commander. All right, good afternoon, everybody. I'm Jason Loomis, I'm the Incident Commander for the National Incident Management Organization Team 3. We are responsible for command of five fires on the Superior National Forest, as well as Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. I'll start with the Thumb Fire. Thumb Fire is a fire that is burning up on the Boundary Waters canoe area. It is on the border with Canada. That fire has spotted up into Canada and has progressed pretty significantly, undetermined how far and with what intensity. I think the take-home message there is, we're really trying to coordinate with our Canadian partners to the north, as well as the First Nation tribes up there, understand that they've been evacuated, so some serious implications associated with that, so that close coordination has been our priority one for the Thumb Fire. I will also say that fire remains largely unstopped. It's just not safe to get folks in there. We don't have the contingent of resources to safely or efficiently get in there and to take any action. So right now, our priority and our management action is to monitor by air to help us gain that situational assessment, as well as intelligence, and not only for us, but provide that same level of intelligence to our partners to the north there. Coming down a little bit further to the south is the Sioux Fire. We are managing the Sioux Fire with a contingent of about 150 personnel. Those numbers fluctuate a little bit because they balance between fire to fire, trying to address some of the most critical needs and protect those values of concern that have been addressed. The Sioux Fire has burned pretty actively up until today. Things have moderated a little bit with the weather conditions that we've observed the last six or eight hours, but we continue to have progression to the south. I will say that progression is relatively moderated, again, because of that weather, but also because we have committed a pretty substantial contingent of resources to go in there, evaluate some of those critical values of concern, and take some of those concerns out of play. Moving over to the Beartrap Fire, the Beartrap has actually become one of our priorities over the course of the last 24 hours, largely owing to the fact that we've had pretty good growth to the south. Don't know exactly the distance of how far it's progressed to the south, but there is significant infrastructure along the Echo Trail, as well as Big Lake, resorts, cabins, homes, all kinds of infrastructure that we are prioritizing our resources to get them out there and protect those values. Last report was the fire was about a mile from that infrastructure. But again, we're moving resources over there as efficiently and safely as we can do so. Moving over to the campfire, the campfire has taken quite a bit of our attention the last three or four days, owing to the fact that we had to evacuate about 300 structures three days ago, along the Fernberg corridor. Certainly a concern, but a lot of coordination has been going on with our sheriff departments from Lake County, as well as St. Louis County. Tremendous coordination and collaboration there and all the operations has been going exceptionally well. So appreciate the support and work there. And then lastly, you know, again, I can't overemphasize you heard it from previous presenters that the conditions are just so extreme. Even with that rainfall that we observed this morning, we're already back into warm conditions. It's getting breezy, it's not going to take long before those fuels are very receptive and available to burn. So we are preparing, we're trying to stay ahead by being proactive with not only our communication strategies, not only our operation strategies, but our ability to really stay ahead of the fire, be very proactive rather than reactive. I just caution you all and just want to remind the public that we are still very extreme here. Our fuels conditions are extremely dry, and it's going to take some significant moisture over a period of time for that to get a little bit of reprieve. So I'll leave you with this. It takes all of us. We're all here to serve you all as public servants. We're all here to work for you as your public servants, but we need you to help us help you be safe and be successful. So please refer to your county emergency, refer to Facebook, refer to any media outlet for any updates. We'll do our best to be expedient and timely with those updates. Thank you. Thanks, Jason. Now we have Paul Lundgren from the Minnesota DNR. Good afternoon, everyone. Paul Lundgren, wildfire section for DNR, representing DNR up here as an agency administrator. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit today, and there's been a little conversation already about our interagency coordination. So MINIX, Minnesota Incident Command System, for those of you who are local, probably have a little bit of a background there, but it really starts there locally within the state of Minnesota. Two state agencies, DNR is the lead wildfire agency on non-federal lands, HSEM, Homeland Security, and then the two federal entities, U.S. Forest Service and the Wildland Fire Service. We have a common platform, and we have that common platform that begins with training, planning, and for operations. The operations you are seeing here now with the large number of fires over a fairly good sized geographic area to manage, and to do our best to protect the firefighters responding and to protect the public, first and foremost. As you think about that, we are many times self-sufficient, meaning within a MINIX organization, we initial attack quickly, we keep fire small, and we put them out. Not every day can we win, and when weather sets up, as you're going to hear in a little bit, it becomes more and more challenging. So it's not the first time we've been here across Minnesota, but we do have a lot of work going on, and we have a lot of work in front of us. So when we think about that coordination, what we all bring to the table to leverage each other's assets, relationships, and so forth, it makes us much better on the cooperative side, the communication side, and the coordination side. And that extends beyond within the state of Minnesota and the entities that are here, but it also includes Ontario and Manitoba, provinces that we have relationships with. We work with them when there are not needs, which helps us be better when there are needs. With that, and I always want to be careful because you leave someone out, there is a lot of efforts going into this. Nationally, you're aware of wildfires in different parts of the U.S. This is our priority. Make no mistake, this is our priority. As part of the DNR, also with all of Minnesota, so we keep track of what's going on elsewhere. Nationally, there are other needs, resources are short, and there are other high values at risk across the country. We are doing well. But it's important when we talk about the shortages in resources and the resources we are bringing in, and they continue to come in. We're doing good that way, but there's a lot of other work, a lot of other needs going on in other places than just here in Minnesota. So we have been treated very good. We are on the national maps, and we are getting most of what we asked for. But we expect those needs to stay challenging in the resource pools only because of what's going on elsewhere. So we look locally first, and then we start to expand. And trust me, we have expanded from neighboring states to places long and far away to bring in the assets here to do what we need to do in Minnesota to, again, protect the firefighters and the public. With that, I want to just mention, too, within the state itself, there's a declaration peacetime emergency. We have the assets of four National Guard helicopters stationed in ORR that are supporting. The Department of Public Safety has their state patrol helicopter with a marking in ORR supporting not just one fire, but all the fires. Not just one agency, but all the agencies. And you break that out with Homeland Security and efforts going on there to support us. I don't want to forget the Minnesota State Fire Marshals Division as a unit within Department of Public Safety who is managing a number of fire departments from across the Northeast. And as we need to, we will expand that need and that call from a greater part of Minnesota because the fire service is tremendously important. They have a job to do, too, and they want to do it. And so as the State Fire Marshals Division assesses those needs for resources based on what the incident management team and the operations unit are expecting for fire behavior, places of concern, in coordination with the county, both Lake and Cook, working very closely with the county emergency managers and the sheriff's office. So again, success is really cooperation and continued communication and coordination. And so when we bring people in, not only the firefighters, it's important that we bring in the management structure. We are fortunate to have a Minix IMT that can respond locally. We have a NEMO team that is in place that has been tremendously helpful in looking at short-term and long-term objectives in managing the organization. Being accountable for people who are on the line. And now we have a SIM key that has come in. And that will help as well. So it's really needs at all levels. Firefighters, they are primary concern on the line. And to ensure, to mitigate some of that safety is to make sure the leadership is in place when we put people out in that environment. All right. Now up next is Phillip Emanuel from the Weather Service, incident meteorologist. Good afternoon. Phil, incident meteorologist for the team. A common weather theme that you have heard from just about everyone here is the weather. The weather dictates everything that happens. It dictated the start of these fires. It dictates how we suppress these fires and how the team reacts and manages what's on the ground out there. For the benefit of those that haven't heard this, you know, how did we get here? We turned the spigot off about a month ago. It didn't rain. We had some lightning on or about July the 6th. And then it got hot, dry, and windy. And fire loves the combination thereof, the hot and the dry and the wind. Once you put that with an ignition like a lightning strike, and we had over 1,000 of those over northern Minnesota, the forest, boundary waters, and up into Ontario, once you have fire, not all of those lightning strikes caused fires, but the ones that did, once that wind got on it and once we got those hot temperatures, those fires ran. Some of them five, six, seven miles in a day sort of thing. And then the next day we had a front come through and the wind blew from the opposite direction and they moved and they got larger. And they're out there still. I mean, we had today, we had some moisture. We had roughly a half inch to an inch of rain. That's good. But I want you to imagine moisture that you get within an hour or hour and a half, which is what we had this morning, maybe two hours worth of a downpour. What happens when you pour water on something? It runs off really quick. Whereas if you could have an extended period of rain, then it would moisten things up. So we haven't done that. What's happened now is the water has caused a temporary pause in what's going on. The smoke's cleared, the wind shifted, and we, and I don't say we in the sense of the team, we as the community get complacent. We think everything's okay because the smoke's gone, must not be any fire out there anymore, right? No, that's not the case. Wind is just blowing the smoke in a different direction in everything out there. Within a day or two, as soon as that sun comes out, it's going to dry back out again and it's going to start to move across the landscape again. So don't think just because the air cleared that you can run in business as usual. That does not happen, not with fires of this size. So this momentary pause, I'll repeat, don't let your guard down because the outlook in the weather forecast, if you're paying attention, temperature's going back up this weekend, wind's going to pick back up this weekend, and we're going to be right back at it with these fires moving on the landscape. Double-edged sword. What happened today when it rained? We had lightning. You can hear it out there rumbling right now, right? There's new points of ignition. Those lightning strikes, some of them most likely hit something that was dead and down and it's in there smoking around just like a cigarette, and we don't know about it. And we don't know about it because it hasn't got big enough to be detected. The smoke may mask the new smoke that it's producing, and we're not going to see it until it gets big enough, and we're going to have some new starts out there. So I caution you, you know, it's like anything else when you're fighting a battle, look behind you because it may be sneaking up behind you. There might be something new out there. So we're going to be out there actively looking for that kind of stuff. When do we change this cycle? You know, weather started all of this, and most likely weather will end all of this. We will manage it until that time comes. I said before, you know, my neighbors on the southeast coast, because they had big fires this spring, you know, you needed rain with a name to put the fires out, and it did. Those in Georgia, those, you know, northern Florida. But up here, odds are you're not getting that sort of system. What we're going to have to depend on is a weather pattern change that brings repeat rainfall. Again, long duration rain, not something that comes from a thunderstorm. We're going to be dealing with these all summer. We need a weather pattern change, and most likely that comes with our first snow. So who wants to name the first snowstorm of the season? Maybe we can do that. But right now, we are dead thick of summer, and we got to go through the month of August before we would get a significant pattern change in this area. I encourage you, you know, if you want to keep up with the weather, the local weather office in Duluth, if you go to www.weather.gov slant d-l-h, you'll get the weather report. And listen to it, because it'll let you know if there's any chance of something coming that would have a name to it. Thank you for your time. Thanks, Bill. Rain with a name. That's what we're waiting for, right? Next up is Josh Hall. Josh is new on the internet over the last couple days, but he is here and a great resource for us, for Air Resource Advisor. Hi, everyone. My name is Josh Hall. The team and the forest brought me in as part of a program I'm a part of, which is the interagency wildland fire air quality response program. We send individuals to wildfires to help support teams and communities. Our primary job is to set up monitors. We have a team of people in Lakewood, Colorado that manages our monitor equipment, and they ship us monitors that we set up and help support communities. We have a team of folks in Seattle that is a group of researchers with the Forest Service as well as partners with universities that are running programs for us. A thing that many of you may have seen, the fire and smoke map, which is a collaboration with the US EPA and the Forest Service, where we collate monitors that state sets out as well as private companies that set up sensor network, and we integrate that all into a common place where the public can go to see what current conditions are out there. As part of that, we also develop forecasts for smoke and air quality in coordination with help from the weather service as well as local state agencies to try and get that message out to the public in terms of what current conditions are on the fire. This is unique. I started with this program in 2011 before we had been authorized by Congress. In New Mexico, there was a fire, the Wallow Fire. It had so much smoke, it crashed the 911 system in Albuquerque. What we're seeing today is an entirely different magnitude. We have air quality alerts all the way from Minnesota, all the way through the Great Lakes, all over the East Coast, from Connecticut, New York, down to North Carolina, all due to the fires from Ontario down to what's here outside of Ely. It's significant. The impacts we're seeing right now seem much better than what we've seen in the last few days as the rain comes through, but based on things like the air quality index that the EPA uses to communicate smoke, we've seen hazardous conditions of air quality, which is the same thing they're seeing in Washington DC and New York City right now. So it's pretty incredible the amount of impact that's occurring. Kind of in the spirit, we've talked a lot about coordination, collaboration. We're working very closely with a lot of our agency partners to try and get this message out to people, but what it comes down to ultimately is the individuals that are affected and the resource that draws when you have to respond to medical emergencies that are occurring probably all over the country where they're seeing this smoke. And it's important to kind of have a coordinated message and get that out. And folks that are most sensitive to smoke, elderly people, young people, pregnant women, people with heart and respiratory disease, they're likely suffering pretty significantly during these events. And so I encourage people to reach out to their friends and neighbors and family members to make sure they're doing okay and have the resources. It's really great to see in Ely, you know, there's a shop front set up that's handing out N95 masks and things like that. So it's great to see things like that happening all over the place. There's a lot of resources. If you go to the Fire and Smoke map, the EPA has multiple sites to go on how to create a DIY health filter in your home or things like that. So please check that out. And, you know, we're doing our best to communicate. We do have forecasts. There's a team of us putting out forecasts that we have three of them right now, one covering Minnesota and part of the Upper Peninsula. And then there's another one covering Great Lakes. And there's another outlook right now that's covering the East Coast. So if you're looking for information, it's a good place to find out what's going on. Thanks. Thank you. So now we're going to open it up to questions. And how we formated it last time, we just kind of let the press let us know what questions you have. You can just raise your hand. And any questions? Go ahead. When you guys were talking about resources, we understand that you're in Doug Forth, Ontario, with their issue. So is that accurate? Are you able to describe resources that are in Minnesota right now? To my knowledge, no, no Minnesota resources are exiting. But we are in contact with them. And I know that fire that has spread into Canada is causing concerns. So there is communications going on. But I can't confirm at this time that we have made any decisions to be able to move up there or to keep what we have here where it's at. Hi, this is Bob Timmons from the Star Tribune. Can you hear me? So as far as our number, we're probably pushed past that 500 range. Maybe into that six. But any number I give you now will change in an hour. And I want to remind folks, we still have people coming in. There's been a lot of influx over the last three, four days, but there are people coming in. And those numbers we give you track those on an incident, but we are getting so much public support. So there are people locally that have equipment that we're doing normal work, maybe a week ago, that have stopped doing that. And now we're working with us together to do put that work down here. So there's a lot of public assistance happening as well. And while we've been treated very good, and we're an influx on that, too. So I would that's going to come out in a number. But it's an important aspect. Can I ask a question, Joy Star Tribune? Let's let's field you next, Bob. Thanks. You know what, this might be a question for Jason about the national perspective. What values are at risk regarding bear trap? You mentioned some of them, but the urgency of that now at the moment and knowing things are fluid, but what's what's changed in terms of in terms of attacking that fire? Are there new tactics right now going on that hadn't been going on even yesterday or several hours ago? Very good question. Did everybody hear that? Or do I need to repeat the question? Check me to repeat it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. The question was regarding bear trap. What has changed over the course of the last 2436 hours with respect to how we have changed our strategy and our tactics? And simply put, at at one point in time, bear trap was a little bit further north up into the wilderness largely. As it's progressed to the south, it's become a little bit more apparent that it is threatening some critical values that have been identified from the forest, from the state, as well as from our county entities. So therefore, what we did to address your question specifically is we diverted resources from the suit fire. And I believe even from the campfire moved them up there to start evaluating and doing a little bit of an initial assessment. That assessment includes fire behavior assessment to figure out truly where the fire is, what's in between the fire and those values that have been identified, and what's the likelihood and probability of that fire impacting those values. So to this point, and to my knowledge, as I'm speaking here with you all today, I don't know that we have taken any direct suppression action. I think largely what has been going on is just a little bit of an assessment and intelligence gathering so we can come up with a definitive strategic and tactical plan. Does that address your question, sir? Yeah, thanks, Jason. Could you be more specific about the elevated resources that could be? Could we be seeing bigger aircraft, more water, that kind of thing? Yeah, certainly. I think it's a little bit premature to speculate, but I could say that if Big Lake and Echo Trail were to come into play, come into play as in being directly impacted by the fire, you could reasonably see more aircraft going into that area to support the ground troop. I would also say that we have hotshot crews here as far as from Mississippi and New Mexico that are here, and I can assure you if there's any need to do any kind of strategic firing or any kind of suppression action, those individuals would be the likely first resources called to that particular location. Thanks. Sorry to dominate this. One last question. I know you've been here before for fires in the past on the forest. Have you ever been here to this level? Another great question. So the question was NEMO or National Incident Management Organization. We've been to Minnesota before as recently as last year. Jenkins Creek, I think, was our last fire, and then we had a smaller one in the boundary waters called Forest River. No, we have never seen anything like this. I'm sure some locals that have been here quite a while have seen events very similar to this, but this is unprecedented. I don't think I need to tell the locals here 104 degree temperatures and teen RH. It comes back to the weather, right? And it also comes back to the low snow impacts of winter that you all experience. I don't think I need to tell you all that that is unprecedented. That's the kind of stuff we see in Arizona and dry, arid climates, not up here in upstate Minnesota. So, no, NEMO has not seen anything like this that we're observing as we speak. Several questions here. I don't know if they're directed for me, but... For the ready signal evacuations, you know, for... As far as we know, there's one group that we're tracking through the boundary waters right now. We've completed sweeps across about 90% of the wilderness. We have 30 wilderness rangers and 15 canoes out there sweeping these lakes and campsites. We estimate that'll take us another possibly three to four more days. There was one group that was active that we're still tracking. Our firefighters were traveling a little bit. How are they being taken care of? What are the biggest needs? You know, we have the incident management team here. They come complete with logistic sections and everything else, logistic managers. So they're setting up camp. They've got, you know, our firefighters take care of that. We ordered a national caterer that they're going to come in and feed them. We make sure that they have, you know, lodging, make sure that they have food, make sure they have the supplies that they need. Our firefighters are well taken care of. We have another camp over in Ore that's moving to Cook, also doing the same thing. It's a little bit smaller over there, but we're taking care of our firefighters. That's, you know, people don't have to worry about that. Once again, Mike Hill with the Minnesota Type 3 Incident Management Team as the incident commander. As I understand your question, talking about the remoteness of the fires and the challenges that are associated with that. Yeah, the short answer is yes. The country is beautiful and protected as wilderness in much of it, and we love that as Minnesotans, but it does make it logistically challenging. Even the things that we would typically depend upon, such as major rivers or lakes, fires have the potential to spot across those, and we've observed that fire behavior. Yeah, the remote country makes it very difficult, and the Boundary Waters is a congressionally designated wilderness area, and so there are laws that are associated with that, and so that's about what can be used there and how, and the Superior National Forest works through that process. The good thing is that we've got all sorts of tools at our disposal. The Superior National Forest is very unique in that sense. The firefighting tactics and strategies here often involve a lot of tools that aren't used throughout the rest of the country because of the water, so they have the ability to put some of those unique tools to use. Becoming more difficult to manage. It's all relative, I would say. It depends. There's a lot of fire on the landscape. Probably the key takeaway there is the way that we prioritize the values at risk. So, given the remoteness of any one particular fire, we're making those evaluations about what threats does that fire pose to the values that are associated around it, and then how do we prioritize that? That's ultimately how we decide where we put our resources. I can't give you the specifics on that, but I know we have had some former employees that are helping us with the firefighting efforts. We also have what we call ready reserve employees, which are not primary fire. They might be wildlife biologists or archaeologists or other professions that are red carded or qualified, but they're also helping with the incident. Yeah, any other questions? So, the closure order is in place. We're not sure when we're going to be able to lift that or to reduce it. The likelihood will be a reduction, not a complete lift, because we will have active fire on the landscape, likely for the rest of the summer until snow flies. I can't answer that right now in terms of when we'll be able to reduce that. We're going to be looking at things like fire behavior, weather, resource availability, those types of things when we can reduce that closure. We're trying to give people at least several days of notice so they can make changes to their trip plans if necessary. Yeah, clarification on that. Big Lake is about what we know and what we can best estimate from intelligence on the mile away from the continuous fire's edge. We also understand that there's spot fires out there, but can't confirm the distance on that. I do want to circle back to a question that was asked earlier, things getting more difficult with respect to remoteness of fires. We, like anybody else, when I say we, I'm not just saying we as in the U.S. Forest Service. I am saying this on behalf of all of our agencies. We only have so many resources to go around. Just for a little bit of national context, we have roughly about 18,000 firefighters committed across the country. I will say that the Eastern Area Coordination Center has done a tremendous job advocating for your needs. So we do have a complex incident management team from the southern area of the United States being deployed as we speak. They will be going into what we call a day of shadow and transition with the National Incident Management Organization and with the Type 3 team. And they will be assuming command tomorrow of all these incidents. What they bring is a lot more capacity. They're a 75-person team as opposed to my team that has 10. So a lot more capacity. We're also, as I briefly mentioned earlier, we're also able to get Type 1 crews, which are hotshot crews. I think that's very well publicized what hotshot crews do and what they bring to this system. They bring a tremendous amount of capability. We already talked about aviation. We're getting very competitive at bringing in aviation where it makes the most sense, most specifically the scoopers, the CL-415s. But still, there's only so many resources to go around. And so when we look at all this fire in the landscape and we look at the remote nature of some of these forests or fires, we understand the impacts of the wilderness. We understand that that's very critical value and is a treasure for you all. We understand that. But we also understand that we have communities that could be impacted. We have infrastructures that could be impacted. And we really need to divert and allocate our resources to address those values and those concerns. Jason, I'm sorry. Sorry, Jason. Thanks. Bob Timmons, Star Tribune again. So you're saying essentially, and again, coming back to values at risk, there's situations, maybe it's the bear trap, where heretofore you might have just hit it with water, but now you would consider putting hotshot crews in on the ground? Is that kind of what you're depending? Yeah, again, I don't want to get in. So the question was, what tactics are we thinking about? That's certainly an option. Aviation is only effective if you could follow it up on the ground. Certainly in this circumstance, where we're talking about specifically the bear trap, on the south end of the bear trap incident, we're down around Big Lake, as well as Echo Trail, we can effectively put boots on the ground. So optimally, we would support our aviation assets with crews, whether it's a hotshot crew or not, is again, remain to be seen. But ideally, that's where we would put some of our best to protect those values. Thank you. The values, the question of regarding values, there's resorts, there's a lodge in there, there's several homes. We don't put a value on homes, they're valued to everybody, right? So homes are important, especially those primary residents, they impact everybody the same. So certainly a mixed use of primary and secondary homes in there as well. I wanted to say, you know, our goal is to keep these fires, all of them as small as possible. We're going as direct as we possibly can on them. Our prior priorities, protecting communities, protecting homes, protecting the community of Ewy, and obviously, as I mentioned, the community of Grain Lake over on the west side. That being said, a lot of these fires, you know, especially the Dom and the bear trap fire up in the wilderness are extremely remote. Very difficult to get into. Typically, you know, fire that size, you know, if it was in areas that were accessible, you probably have, you know, at least a couple hundred firefighters on that. But that requires, as was mentioned earlier, you know, fairly large camp with logistics, with meals, with a place for firefighters to sleep, with, you know, supplies, you know, hose lays, you know, couplings, all that, all that kind of stuff that they would need to fight these fires. And we just can't, it's not easy to get up there. You know, you're going in by canoe, which is, you know, maybe two or three firefighters at a time, or you're going in by float plane. So, you know, that's a real challenge is how do you get, you know, 150, 200 firefighters into an area where you have no vehicular access and your only access is, you know, canoes and float planes, and you have no place really to set up a, you know, logistics, a camp, basically, which is normally, you know, if it's out in the open, some of those are 10, 15 acres. We just don't have places like that in the boundary waters where we can do that. And, you know, that's a challenge. Okay. One more, we have time for one more question. Anyone? Do we have any preliminary estimates? So right now, with our most recent mapping, it's about 77,000 acres. Forest wide. So, but again, we have a lot of uncontrolled fire lineup that we expect that that number will continue to grow as the summer goes along. But where we're going to end up, you know, I can't give an estimate for that, but we're at 77,000 approximately based on the aerial imagery and the flight that we flew two nights ago. Is there any idea? I know we've lost some. I think there were a few structures lost on the Sioux incident. I believe those are all Forest Service structures. Those are the only ones that I'm aware of. So we've been, so far, I've been very fortunate, you know, in that regard. We plan to keep it that way. All right. So that is the end of our press conference today.