Monster Fire at Minong

As a column of black pine smoke reached high in the sky, citizens from Minong, Chicog, Webster, Gordon, Wascott, Hayward, Spooner, Solon Springs, and other communities in northwestern Wisconsin began showing up to help. The grassy field designated as fire headquarters quickly became a hub of activity, jammed with trucks, school buses, dozers on trailers, dump trucks, tanker trucks, fuel trucks, and hundreds of people waiting to sign in. More than nine hundred came in the first four hours, clogging the road with traffic in both directions. Headquarters personnel worked valiantly to coordinate citizens and DNR workers in a buildup of people and equipment unprecedented in the history of Wisconsin firefighting.

Based on his own experiences during the long battle, plus dozens of interviews and other eyewitness accounts, Bill Matthias presents an in-depth look at the Five Mile Tower Fire, the brave citizens who helped fight it, and the important changes made to firefighting laws and procedures in its aftermath.

“Bill Matthias shows how a courageous band of volunteers stood up to one of the most powerful forces of nature to save people’s homes and lives. Monster Fire at Minong tells the incredible story of a modern conflagration that opened an era of fires in the Great Northwoods. Anyone with a cabin on a lake will want to hear its cautionary tale.”

—Rocky Barker, author of Scorched Earth: How the Fires of Yellowstone Changed America

“Matthias evokes the searing heat and the ravenous fury of flames as hundreds of men and machines were mobilized in a feverish fight to save homes and lives. Within the drama of human sacrifice needed to tame the fiery beast, he has chronicled the techniques of modern-day forest firefighting, many of which evolved from lessons learned in that monster fire. All that is missing is the smell of smoke.”

—Earl Thayer, former member of the Wisconsin Lakes Association Board of Directors