History Mystery: He was on the scene of big fire

Kermit Nielsen of Cloquet had some interesting recollections spurred by the Dec. 16 History Mystery item about a pulpwood fire at Northwest Paper in April of 1963. News reports at the time said a lightning strike may have been the genesis of the fire, though there was no definitive cause of the fire that ate up at least 11,000 cords of wood. The loss was recorded as $250,000, or $2.4 million in today's dollars.

Kermit said the lightning explanation may have been a ruse to recoup losses through insurance. There is no proof of Kermit's theory that workers taking a break on one of the massive woodpiles may have dropped a cigarette into the "dross" collected between the stacks of wood, igniting and starting the fire.

Kermit said it was April 3 when he heard from a friend about a fire at the Cloquet plant. Bill Shipley's father, Arvin "Dude" Shipley, saw smoke at the woodpiles while working at the Knife Falls dam. He called it in, Kermit said.

He and Bill climbed atop two piles of jackpine just north of aspen stacks that were on fire. Fire crews, as seen above, were on the scene, dousing the fire that would prove stubborn to put out due to high winds and dry conditions, coupled with unstable stacks of logs that kept firefighters at a distance for their safety.

Kermit said Dude Shipley often watched the action down at the plant, and he recalled seeing a track crew performing maintenance on the line that moved the logs about. They had a "coffee and smoke" break, Kermit recalls Dude telling him, and three hours later the smoke could be seen. It was Dude who assumed a cigarette may have caused the fire. Northwest officials said they thought a lightning strike the night before might have been to blame.

After three days, "the fire was not extinguished, it was contained," Kermit said. A firebreak was created around the burning logs, a Herculean task of removing logs by crane onto trucks and rail flatbeds. Kermit said Ray Siltanen worked a crane for 24 hours straight.

"In terms of loss, this was Cloquet's biggest fire ever, with the exception of the 1918 fire," Kermit said. "It could have been much worse if the crane and rail workers had not exerted superhuman efforts."