List of Michigan wildfires

The U.S. state of Michigan has been the site of several major wildfires. The worst of these were in the lumbering era of the late-1800s when lumbering practices permitted the buildup of large slash piles and altered forest growth patterns which may have contributed to size of the wildfires. The scattered nature of settlements, lumber camps and Indian tribes during this time lead to large uncertainties in determining the number of deaths and property losses. More recent fires have been much smaller and contained by modern firefighting methods with better records of the destruction they caused. Almost all of the thousands of yearly fires in the state are only a few acres, although 100-200 homes are damaged each year by these small fires.[1]

Fire	Date	Location	Size (acres)	Size (km²)	Damage	Deaths	Notes
Great Michigan Fires	October 8, 1871	multiple locations	over 1,500,000	over 6,000	thousands	hundreds	fires across Wisconsin, Michigan, and the cities of Holland, Manistee and Chicago
Port Huron Fire of 1871	October 8, 1871	The Thumb	1,200,000	4,850	thousands	50+	same day as Great Michigan fire
Peshtigo Fire	October 8, 1871	Menominee County, Michigan	hundreds of thousands	hundreds	thousands	dozens[2]	same day as The Great Chicago fire
Thumb Fire	September 5, 1881	The Thumb	1,000,000	4,000	over 2,000 structures	282
Metz Fire	October 15, 1908	Metz	300,000	1,200	hundreds of structures	37[3]	15 deaths occurred when the rescue train derailed in a burning lumber siding
Ontonagon Fire	August 1896	Ontanogan	228,000	923	hundreds	1	[4]
Seney Fire	August - October, 1976	Seney National Wildlife Refuge	78,000	316	0	0	burned for months underground in peat
Ishpeming fire	October 1896	Ishpeming	64,000	259	unknown	unknown	[5]
Mack Lake fire	May 5, 1980	Mio	25,000	101	44 homes	1	[6]
Duck Lake fire	May-June 2012	Luce County	21,000	85	136 structures	0
Sleeper Lake Fire	August, 2007	Luce County	18,000	73	0	0
Au Sable-Oscoda Fire	July 11, 1911	Iosco County	thousands	dozens	hundreds	5+	Acreage burned unclear because of numerous fires burning the area that year[7]

The Meridian Boundary Fire in 2010 burned 8,586 acres near Grayling, Michigan in 2010.

Oscoda Fire of 1945

See also

•  Michigan portal

References

1. Wildfires and Firewise, Michigan State University, 02/03/2012
2. 21 dead listed by name from Birch Creek, near Menominee, JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Session, 1873, MADISON, WIS.
3. Metz Remembers, The Alpena News, Mike Modrzynski, October 12, 2008
4. The Forests of Michigan, Donald I. Dickmann, Larry A. Leefers, University of Michigan Press, 2003, p. 164
5. The Forests of Michigan, Donald I. Dickmann, Larry A. Leefers, University of Michigan Press, 2003, p. 165
6. Wildfire History, Michigan State University, 10/17/2011, accessed July 14, 2012
7. The Forests of Michigan, Donald I. Dickmann, Larry A. Leefers, University of Michigan Press, 2003, p. 168

• Hanines, D. A.; Sando, R. W. (1969), Climatic Conditions Preceding Historically Great Fires in the North Central Region (PDF), U.S.D.A. Forest Service Research Paper NC-34; see Figure 1.