The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) estimates that over 5,000 wildfires occur in the state each year. The vast majority are small, burning less than 50 acres, while a few may involve more than 15,000 acres.  Most of these fires occur in March, April, and May, when vegetation has been killed due to cold winter temperatures.
 A few are natural, caused by lightning strikes.  Others are caused by both accidental and malicious human acts.  Some are the result of prescribed burns planned by the Forrest Service.
What was supposed to be a twenty-eight acre prescribed burn on May 5, 1980, turned into a major uncontrolled forest fire, now known as the Mack Lake Fire. The purpose of the burn had been to establish a few acres of suitable habitat for the Kirtland’s Warbler, an endangered bird, found in the pine jack timber of the Huron National Forest near Crane Lake.
On the morning of the planned burn, weather conditions were not ideal. Temperatures were in the seventies, higher than usual for that time of year.  Conditions were predicted to worsen by late afternoon with the humidity dropping below 25 and wind speeds increasing with gusts up to 25 miles per hour.  But, the prescribed burn was less than thirty acres and planned to be finished by noon.
 At 10:25 a.m., the lead Forest Service worker at the site gave the notice for the burn to begin. The burn progressed as planned.  Small spot fires that had been anticipated were quickly controlled.
The fire went as planned until about 12 noon when flames “jumped” and torched standing pine jack timber. The prescribed burn had become a major wildfire.  The fire “crowned” and jumped ahead of a tractor being used to prepare a fire line. The operator of the tractor not aware that the fire had jumped ahead, became trapped and perished in the flames.
Within an hour, the fire had advanced two miles to the Town of Mack Lake.  By the time the raging fire was extinguished, it had destroyed 41 homes and consumed more than 24,000 acres of National Forrest.  The Forest Service estimated that the fire had released the energy equal to six times of that released in the Atomic Bomb denotation over Hiroshima.
The Mack Lake fire that had destroyed 41 homes and was responsible for the life of a Forrest Service worker, had also created more than 10,000 acres of habitant for the Kirtland’s Warbler. The fire is credited with the remarkable recovery of the bird in the 1990s. In 1991, sixty percent of all singing males were counted on the Mack Lake burn site.
A copy of the Mack Lake Lessons Learned Report, prepared by the Forest Service, may be down loaded at: http://lepcnews.squarespace.com/mack-lake-fire/.  The tractor operator that died was James Lee Swiderski, a Forrest Service biologist. A Lessons Learned Video dedicated to Swiderski may be viewed at: http://www.myfirevideos.net/Default.aspx?VideoID=383.