Unless you live west of the Mississippi you probably are seeing smoke outside! Hopefully we get some relief soon! I did some quick calculations and the un-official information I came up with is this!
Canada fires that are giving us some smoke cover about 1,543,000 acres, and in Minnesota I came up with 70,600 acres!
So lets give that some content! That is about 2522 square miles of land that is burning or has burned. That is the size of Kent County and Ottawa County together.
Canada fires are tough to fight! In many places there aren’t roads to get crews to the fire. With little population in a lot of the Canadian areas, fire crews are placed near towns to protect them. And “put down line” where they can do so safely. So wild land fires tend to get larger than ones in the US. Looking at the topography where the fires are located in North Eastern Minnesota it is comparable to Canada. Here in Michigan we have some advantages, or are they disadvantages, we have roads all over the place. This is because of the density of houses and towns. Take northern Kent county for example, not many places you can go with out a road every mile. This makes it easy to get crews to the fire and knock it down rather quickly. Now if you have traveled in the UP you know that it may be miles to the next road. Lets think about the ground your walking on! In the lower peninsula it can be tough to walk through some areas, but for the most part you it can be done with out a lot of trouble. The upper peninsula (Northern Minnesota/Canada) there are places it may take you an hour to hike in a mile. Don’t even think about getting any kind of trucks or dozers there. This is why fixed wing and rotary winged aircraft are needed.
So just what can we do about the smoke?? Well…….nothing really. Stay inside and try to limit your outdoor activities. One thing you can do though! While your inside and perhaps board…..Pray for the safety of the crews. Without any digging into stats for the year I know of five wild land fire fighters that have been killed in the line of duty in the USA. These fires have cost millions of dollars, houses can be rebuilt, trees will grow back, fields will be incredibly green in a few months. The men and women that are “on the line” can not be replaced.
Emily Baker, 38 from Clinton Township Michigan was killed June 28th, 2026 at the Knowles Fire (Snyder Fire) in Colorado. She and four other crew from the Rifle Helitack crew were involved in a “burned over”. Two of her crew Nick Hutcherson and Sydney Watson also perished, only two of the crew survived.
