List of Michigan wildfires
The U.S. state of Michigan has been the site of several major wildfires. The worst of these were in the lumbering era of the late-1800s when lumbering practices permitted the buildup of large slash piles and altered forest growth patterns which may have contributed to size of the wildfires. The scattered nature of settlements, lumber camps and Indian tribes during this time lead to large uncertainties in determining the number of deaths and property losses. More recent fires have been much smaller and contained by modern firefighting methods with better records of the destruction they caused. Almost all of the thousands of yearly fires in the state are only a few acres, although 100-200 homes are damaged each year by these small fires.[1]
The Meridian Boundary Fire in 2010 burned 8,586 acres near Grayling, Michigan in 2010.
Wildfires
| Fire | Date | Location | Size (acres) | Size (km²) | Damage | Deaths | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Great Michigan Fires | October 8, 1871 | multiple locations | over 1,500,000 | over 6,000 | thousands | hundreds | fires across Wisconsin, Michigan, and the cities of Holland, Manistee and Chicago |
| Port Huron Fire of 1871 | October 8, 1871 | The Thumb | 1,200,000 | 4,850 | thousands | 50+ | same day as Great Michigan fire |
| Peshtigo Fire | October 8, 1871 | Menominee County, Michigan | hundreds of thousands | hundreds | thousands | dozens[2] | same day as The Great Chicago fire |
| Thumb Fire | September 5, 1881 | The Thumb | 1,000,000 | 4,000 | over 2,000 structures | 282 | |
| Metz Fire | October 15, 1908 | Metz | 300,000 | 1,200 | hundreds of structures | 37[3] | 15 deaths occurred when the rescue train derailed in a burning lumber siding |
| Ontonagon Fire | August 1896 | Ontanogan | 228,000 | 923 | hundreds | 1 | [4] |
| Seney Fire | August - October, 1976 | Seney National Wildlife Refuge | 78,000 | 316 | 0 | 0 | burned for months underground in peat |
| Ishpeming fire | October 1896 | Ishpeming | 64,000 | 259 | unknown | unknown | [5] |
| Mack Lake fire | May 5, 1980 | Mio | 25,000 | 101 | 44 homes | 1 | [6] |
| Duck Lake fire | May-June 2012 | Luce County | 21,000 | 85 | 136 structures | 0 | |
| Sleeper Lake Fire | August, 2007 | Luce County | 18,000 | 73 | 0 | 0 | |
| Au Sable-Oscoda Fire | July 11, 1911 | Iosco County | thousands | dozens | hundreds | 5+ | Acreage burned unclear because of numerous fires burning the area that year[7] |
Gallery
Oscoda Fire of 1945
References
- Wildfires and Firewise, Michigan State University, 02/03/2012
- 21 dead listed by name from Birch Creek, near Menominee, JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Session, 1873, MADISON, WIS.
- Metz Remembers, The Alpena News, Mike Modrzynski, October 12, 2008
- The Forests of Michigan, Donald I. Dickmann, Larry A. Leefers, University of Michigan Press, 2003, p. 164
- The Forests of Michigan, Donald I. Dickmann, Larry A. Leefers, University of Michigan Press, 2003, p. 165
- Wildfire History, Michigan State University, 10/17/2011, accessed July 14, 2012
- The Forests of Michigan, Donald I. Dickmann, Larry A. Leefers, University of Michigan Press, 2003, p. 168
Bibliography
- Hanines, D. A.; Sando, R. W. (1969), Climatic Conditions Preceding Historically Great Fires in the North Central Region (PDF), U.S.D.A. Forest Service Research Paper NC-34; see Figure 1.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.