Firefighters battle saw mill blaze

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

Nov. 11, 1999

By Devlyn Brooks

The Bemidji Fire Department and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources were working to extinguish a large fire at Hurd Saw Mill, 4621 Bemidji Ave. N., as the Pioneer went to press Wednesday.

The fire department's Dick Sathers said five fire department trucks, three DNR trucks and more than 20 firefighters were battling the blaze in a slash pile at the sawmill about 10:30 p.m.

A slash pile, Sathers said, is a pile of unused chunks of wood formed when making lumber.

The 40-by-100-foot pile was producing a "pretty big fire," he said.

The fire, located north of Thorson's Inc. and west of Beltrami County Road 21, was reported about 7:30 p.m.

Sathers said efforts were hampered by the fact that hoses had to be drug from a couple of blocks away.

He said he expected firefighters to be at the fire there most of the night, but he said it was "confined to that pile and not threatening any homes."