A fire in a remote area of the Porcupine Mountain State Park has been contained, an official said Monday.
Rain that fell overnight Sunday made a “tremendous difference” in getting a handle on the fire, which officials first reported Friday, said Dean Wilson, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
He told the Daily Globe of Ironwood that it apparently started when lightning struck a hemlock tree in the park, located in the far western Upper Peninsula.
The fire covered about 1,360 acres but was a “cool burn” that stayed mostly on the ground, consuming fallen leaves, he said.
“It’s been a real low-intensity fire. The trees were not damaged,” DNR incident commander James Haapapuro told The Mining Journal of Marquette. “It actually helped the forest [by] releasing nutrients into the soil sooner than they would have been.”
Resident volunteers joined DNR and township firefighters in battling the fire over the weekend. A “mopping-up crew” of two dozen remained on the job Monday, Wilson said.
Crews also battled two other Upper Peninsula fires over the weekend.
One was a 24-acre flareup near the Bishop Baraga Memorial off U.S. Highway 41 between L’Anse and Baraga. The other covered 25 acres about 15 miles northeast of Ontonagon.
Both were being mopped up Monday, said Martin Nelson of the DNR’s Baraga office.
Officials suspect the Baraga County fire was caused by unextinguished smoking materials in a hunter’s deer blind, while lightning touched off the Ontonagon County fire.
