Wildfire Evacuees Anxiously Wait To Return Home

More than 50 people have evacuated their homes in far northern Wisconsin, fleeing the largest wildfire there in 33 years.

Many are wondering when they can return and whether they have a home to go back to.

The fire is 90 percent contained as of this afternoon. Emergency management and fire officials spent the morning updating evacuees at Drummond High School. Department of Natural Resources fire incident commander Larry Glodoski addressed a tired crowd:

“There’s a lot of live power lines. There’s a lot of dead trees that are out there burning. It’s just not a safe environment for people to go back into yet. It’s dangerous for our firefighters and definitely dangerous for you.”

Laurene Peterson stayed at the school overnight. She grabbed a few mementos from her home on Ellison Lake near Barnes before evacuating.

“If they had been lost in the fire, I would’ve been sad. But, the most important things were my family, which were with me and they were safe.”

The last Peterson heard, her home was still standing, but she doesn’t know if that’s still the case. It’s the same for Dave Brown. He has lived in the home he built on Ellison Lake for 30 years. He was setting up for a garage sale when the Douglas County sheriff told him to leave. “We drove down Beauregard Lake Road and we could see it was quite a ways away. We didn’t dream it’d ever be by our house.”

Brown is worried. His neighbor two lots down lost his house. “We’re just like a whole family. The whole neighborhood is. It’s just absolutely unreal.”

The Germann Road Fire has burned more than 9,000 acres and destroyed 47 buildings, 17 of them homes and cabins. Fire officials hope people may return to their homes by Thursday morning if the line holds.