Anders Noren, his wife Carolyn, and their two daughters, ages 16 and 14, were set out to vacation in the BWCA for six days.  Anders had been coming up to the BWCA all of his life, and it had become an annual family tradition for about the past 10 years.  They started out on Brant Lake on August 19th.  

On Friday, August 20th, they arrived at their campsite where they planned to spend a few nights. Thirty minutes after they arrived there, they saw the plume of smoke on the horizon.  It had not been there when they first arrived.  They were downwind of the smoke so they moved to a different location.  The rest of the afternoon they watched the fire build.  They saw a Forest Service airplane that was circling the fire then going over the lake.  It soon landed in front of them and the pilot came to the family’s campsite.  He told them that they could stay the night but not the next day because the winds would be changing.  He asked if they saw other people camping, and they told him where.  The pilot headed off to notify the others in the area.

That night they could see flames above the treetops in the distance, which was an unsettling sight.  Rain started coming down at midnight and continued on and off until morning.  By the time they woke up, they could smell the smoke and knew the winds changed.  They had a quick breakfast, packed up and headed away to base camp and day trip for the rest of the week.  However, a few lakes later they saw the closure signs.  They talked to another group of campers who had been notified by the forest rangers that the BWCA was shutting down.  They continued to move out and cut their trip short as they headed to safety.

Thanks to Anders Noren and his family for sharing their story of being first hand witnesses to a wildfire.  And special thanks to the efforts of emergency management personnel from the Superior National Forest that helped guide them out of harms way.