TOIMI — When Nate Eide was on the south end of Murphy Lake last month, he was helping supply water to crews battling the Camp House Fire as a new volunteer firefighter on the Two Harbors Fire Department.

The area had been replanted with trees last spring, having been logged the previous winter, so its light vegetation served as a firebreak. Hotshot crews then backburned the area to further reduce the fuel load.

Although the wildfire burned on the other side of the water, destroying several cabins at Wilderness North, a Christian camp across the small lake, the firebreak worked as intended, stopping the fire from burning further.

On a recent morning, three weeks after the fire, Eide returned to the now-charred site in his role as Lake County’s land commissioner to help oversee the re

See Full Page