Welcome to a new week in Minnesota. Get ready for a return to warmer and humid weather. Widely scattered thunderstorms are likely Monday night, Tuesday and Tuesday night but locations and timing are fuzzy. At this point, there is a marginal risk for severe weather for the 24-hour period ending Tuesday morning. The latest on the Updraft.
| |
|
|
|
Smoke rises from the John Ek fire in northern Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on Friday. Photo via Superior National Forest
|
Dozens of Forest Service rangers are paddling their way through the BWCA, telling campers that they need to leave. The wilderness area is closed for the week due to dry conditions.
“I don’t think of it as an evacuation, but just implementation of a closure,” said Cathy Quinn, a recreation and wilderness specialist with the Forest Service.
Quinn said she knows of no campers who are in harm’s way; rangers have already cleared campsites closest to the fires. She said the BWCA closed entirely so emergency responders can focus on fighting the fires, not rescuing stranded or injured campers.
“Prior to the John Ek fire growing, we did have a search that diverted one of our floatplanes for a period of time,” Quinn said.
Quinn said crews are occasionally using those planes to see if campsites are occupied and to make contact with campers. Some visitors with satellite communication devices are getting the news by text. But word of the closure is mostly moving at canoe speed. Quinn said rangers are trying to reach as many campsites as they can across the million-acre wilderness area.
“With air resources, aircraft are designated to the highest priority fire at the time,” she said.
The focus for wildland firefighting crews now is the much larger Greenwood Fire in Lake County, about 40 miles north of Two Harbors. On Friday, it crossed County Highway 2, triggering more evacuations of homes and cabins.
Read more from Matt Sepic. | | |
|
|
|
The delta variant of COVID-19 raised the urgency to vaccinate, especially among those who work with older people. The Biden administration took the urgency a step further, but the reaction in Minnesota is mixed.
Last week, President Joe Biden took the unusual step of mandating vaccinations in a particular industry, saying that employees of nursing homes whose residents are on Medicare or Medicaid, will need to get vaccinated.
Kristine Sundberg, Executive Director of Elder Voice Family Advocates , called the news “long overdue, but we need much more than that."
Patti Cullen, the president and CEO of Care Providers of Minnesota, which represents long-term care facilities across the state, says facilities want their staff to get vaccinated, but they also worry about losing workers at a time when many are already short-staffed.
Cullen says vaccination rates are hovering around 50 percent in rural facilities.
Peter Cox has the rest of the story. | |
|
|---|
|
|
|
| Here's what else we're watching |
|
|
|
Preference Center ❘ Unsubscribe You received this email because you subscribed or it was sent to you by a friend. This email was sent by: Minnesota Public Radio
480 Cedar Street Saint Paul, MN, 55101   |
|
|
| |
|
