Полвека спустя ветераны тушения крупнейшего пожара в истории штата Мичиган делятся воспоминаниями

Just one spark: 50 years after the Great Seney Fire UPPER MICHIGAN. (WLUC) - On July 30, 1976, a lightning strike started what would become the largest wildfire in Michigan since 1908. Efforts to put it out would last into the fall. 50 years later, DNR firefighters who battled the Great Seney Fire sat down to share their stories with us. Gregory Lusk and Michael Paluda were both on the ground fighting the Great Seney Fire in 1976. That summer, Lusk was in Marquette, working for the Department of Natural Resources as the U.P.’s regional fire management specialist. Paluda also worked for the DNR as the district fire supervisor in Newberry. When the fire broke out in the summer of 1976, they helped coordinate the state’s firefighting efforts. “I was called the state fire boss since we had three agencies on the fire, state, feds and then the refuge,” Paluda said. “And I was the assistant state fire boss, working with Mike,” Lusk said. National Weather Service Records show exceptionally dry conditions, which set the stage for a wildfire. “The summer of 1976 was really dry,” NWS Meteorologist Ben Warren said. “Widespread drought persisted that whole entire summer.” “All the swamps dried out and normally they would have been unavailable to burn,” Lusk said. “But in that summer, they were available to burn, and once burned, they were available to burn after they dried out a second and third time.” The stage was set for an explosive reaction. On July 30, 1976, a lightning strike ignited that dry material, and the fire spread into what would become the Great Seney Fire near the Walsh Ditch. But Paluda says the initial response was delayed due to fire management practices in place on the wilderness refuge at the time. “They were very confused at the time because they had a relatively new ‘let burn’ policy and law, and they didn’t really know how to manage it,” Paluda said. “And so, since it was a small fire, they didn’t think they really needed to do anything. Or they couldn’t do anything because they would have been in violation of the law. Right?” “That’s correct,” Lusk said. “And they also didn’t have a fire management plan. They didn’t have fire staff on the refuge. They do now, of course. They’re very well staffed and very well skilled.” Lusk says the refuge did have good advice from the DNR about what the fire was going to do. He says when the fire was very small initially, there was no threat to life and resource damage was almost nil. But Paluda says the DNR was barred from responding in those early stages. “The refuge manager, in coordination with his headquarters, would not allow us to go in and put the fire out because of their ‘let burn’ policy,” Paluda said. “So it was, they were confused on what they could do and what they couldn’t do.” But the fire was spreading and continued to spread for over a week before the first person got on it. “Just to keep track of where it was in relation to the refuge boundary, I had the local supervisor out of Manistique going out and marking the fire with toilet paper hanging from the bushes so that the pilot flying over could see where he was marking the boundary and could keep track and tell us how close it was getting,” Paluda said. While the initial response was delayed, over one thousand people from across the country would eventually be on the ground battling the flames. In the next part of this series, we’ll tell you their stories and the challenges that kept the fire burning well into the fall. The video above will feature the TV6 livestream until staff can clip the corresponding story, if available, from broadcasts or other TV6 content. You can subscribe to our YouTube page or download TV6+ to stream the latest local news and weather. Copyright 2026 WLUC. All rights reserved.