Surrounded by a charred landscape, a small cabin sits unscathed

FAIRBANKS TOWNSHIP, MINN. – Torched pine and spruce trees flanked each side of a dirt road off Hwy. 44 here, some downed and hanging precipitously over the blackened ditches.

Residents who evacuated from the massive Camp House and Jenkins Creek fires earlier in the week were allowed a few hours inside the closed zones to check their properties for the first time Friday, and in some cases to learn whether they were still standing.

Gregg Anderson of Two Harbors stopped to survey the place of a friend who lives in Washington state. The Salo Lake cabin was surrounded by charred terrain, and he marveled at the contrast: The small cabin nestled among spring grass in the shadow of greened-up poplar trees, but surrounding it was desolate and scorched land spiked with dead trees and exposed rock.

What really interested him, Anderson said, was how many properties survived amid the destruction in this area, about 30 miles northwest of Two Harbors.

“That’s what we should be talking about,” he said. “How many were saved.”

Whether it was preserved by one of the many volunteer departments deployed to fight the fires, proper land management or just pure luck, it was one of several homes or cabins he had seen make it through the fires so far, he said.

The Camp House fire came within a quarter-mile of Anderson’s own cabin on a nearby lake. But the proximity of the fire to his friend’s place, which bore only slight burns on a portion of its siding, was just mere feet. Through the trees, there was no sign of another cabin that he remembered as being nearby.

“Looks like that one burned,” he said.

Nearly 150 structures have been counted as destroyed so far in the Camp House fire, which began Sunday and has grown to 15,000 acres, or more than 23 square miles. It’s on pace to become the most property-destructive Minnesota wildfire in modern times.

The fire didn’t grow overnight, in part owing to hours of intermittent rain, said Brian Jenkins, incident commander for the Eastern Area Complex Incident Team, which is coordinating the firefighting efforts.

Fire officials had hopes continued rainy weather and humidity would keep further evacuations at bay. The weather did prevent planes from flying Friday, said St. Louis County Sheriff Gordon Ramsay. That hindered efforts to track the remote Jenkins Creek fire and drop water on its northwestern portion, which is about six miles from Hoyt Lakes.