Star Tribune
Fire crews stand ready in parched Minnesota
Just past Prior Lake, the earth was on fire.
Flames burrowed into the dry, peaty soil of Springfield Township and smoldered for days, as fire crews hacked and dug, trying to stop the flames before they threatened lives and property.
Peat has been a source of warmth and fuel for thousands of years. But usually it has to be cut out of the earth and dried before it can burn. Minnesota’s summer drought had turned the ground beneath our feet to kindling.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources estimates that 98% of the wildfires in this state are started by humans. A cigarette flicked out a car window. A pile of burning yard waste left unattended.
Small wildfires burned outside Prior Lake and Arlington in the Twin Cities metro this week. One was sparked by burning debris. The other fire’s cause has not been determined, but the odds are that one of us started it.
The temperatures are dropping. October is turning cold and clammy. As tempting as it might be to light an autumn bonfire, state fire officials are hoping you will not.
“Because of how dry things were, the peat moss in these wetlands, the roots and things, were burning literally underground,” said Prior Lake City Manager Jason Wedel. Fire crews battled the subterranean blaze with thermal imaging, digging toward hotspots before they could spread.
On Wednesday, the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for large swaths of southwestern Minnesota, as high winds whipped across tinder-dry farmland and prairie.
Now is not the time, state fire officials remind us, to burn leaves or gather around a bonfire or shoot off incendiaries at a gender reveal party. Not without checking to make sure your community still is issuing burn permits, at least.
On the dry days, when high winds whip across drought-stressed fields and forests, “pretty much any spark or ignition out of doors could cause a fire to ignite,” said William Glesener, wildfire operations supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
The DNR has responded to more than 550 wildfires so far this year – well below the 2,000-plus fires it battled in 2021, thanks to this year’s late, soggy spring. But on Wednesday, fire officials were keeping a wary eye on counties like Cottonwood, Jackson, Lincoln, Lyon, Murray, Nobles, Pipestone and Rock, where there wasn’t enough rain in the forecast to make up for months of drought.
In the counties under red flag warnings, the state is asking residents to keep their properties clear of debris, and keep a hose handy, just in case.
“Just to make sure that if something were to happen, they could wet down the area around their house or their property,” Glesener said. “But the biggest thing is to just make sure that folks are not going outside and doing any debris burning – that’s still fairly common in the state of Minnesota. People like to pile up and burn leaves and brush when they’re cleaning up their property in the fall.”
The smell of burning leaves is one of the signature scents of autumn, but it’s not a smell anyone would welcome around Prior Lake right now.
Fire crews had just smothered the peat fire in Springfield Township when word came that a barn was on fire. The humans and animals were safe, Wedel said, but Prior Lake won’t be issuing burn permits for a bit.
His advice for the time being: “Don’t burn things.”
The Pentagon would not go into detail about how American trainers are helping Taiwan build defenses. But making clear to the Chinese that an amphibious assault would be fraught is part of the U.S. military’s deterrence plan.
Army officials also say they hope joint exercises with Pacific partners will show Chinese military officials all the capabilities that the United States has and can bring to bear.
The officials point out that more than a quarter of the service’s 450,000 active-duty troops are already tasked to the Pacific. But they define that region liberally, to encompass troops not only in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines but also in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon and California. Taiwan is more than 6,000 miles from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, a separation the Army refers to as “the tyranny of distance.”
Docked in Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army vessel Maj. Gen. Robert Smalls will be critical to getting all the apparatuses of the Army into the Pacific theater. The 300-foot-long ship, which recently arrived from Norfolk, Virginia, via the Panama Canal for the exercises, can beach itself, discharging 900 tons of vehicles and cargo — and, if necessary, troops — onto islands.
Capt. Ander Thompson, the commander of the 7th Engineer Dive Detachment out of Pearl Harbor, was part of a detachment that spent several weeks this past summer with Filipino military divers clearing debris from a strategic port in the northern Philippine island of Batan, about 120 miles south of Taiwan.
The operation, which also deepened the harbor, will give Army and Navy ships better access to the port should conflict break out. Batan is near the Bashi Channel, a potential transit point for American forces headed to the Taiwan Strait.
For a handful of school board candidates across the state, the final weeks of campaigning have included an effort to lose support — or at least distance themselves ― from an organization known for backing conservative candidates and wading into local culture wars.
At least four candidates have stated publicly that they had not connected with or sought support from the Minnesota Parents Alliance before seeing their name appear on the group’s online voters guide. Some candidates said they were not aware of such an endorsement until voters reached out to them with questions about it.
“Without my knowledge or consent, I was added to the Minnesota Parents Alliance recommended candidate list,” Todd Haugen, a candidate for the Bemidji school board, wrote on his campaign’s Facebook page. “I did not seek this endorsement, and I have now requested more than once to be taken off of the list.”
The Minnesota Parents Alliance bills its voters guide as a nonpartisan resource, though the group lists several conservative groups, including the think tank Center of the American Experiment, on its list of resources for candidates.
The organization’s executive director, Cristine Trooien, said the voter guide recommendations are based on an independent evaluation of candidates’ campaigns, public engagement, and input received from parents and community members. Trooien launched the group in 2022 as a response to equity efforts in schools. Its initial goal included recruiting and supporting school board candidates who would champion ‘parents’ rights’ in education.
The group, and several others like it — on both sides of the political spectrum — cropped up during the pandemic, when tensions flared in school board rooms across the country as parents fought over mask mandates, curriculum and policies involving gender and race. Increasingly, school board races are drawing more money than ever — largely a result of outside groups lobbying amid those ongoing culture wars.
In general, endorsements aren’t new to school board races. Political parties, teachers unions and other educational organizations have long declared their support for candidates that align with their missions.
Minnesota Parents Alliance, Trooien said, does not coordinate its voter guide recommendations with candidates or require them to pledge their allegiance to the organization. She sees that as the antidote to what she called a “quid pro quo endorsement process” by teachers unions and interest groups, which offer support in “exchange for prioritizing that organization’s agenda at the board table,” she said.
Rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine was arrested in New York City on Tuesday for alleged parole violations that were set when he was sentenced several years ago to two years in prison in a racketeering case.
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