A fire at a campground in the Adirondack Mountains burns part of an island in Lower Saranac Lake

28 August 2024 —

On Tuesday night, Rebekah Mills went paddling on Lower Saranac Lake with two friends – Nate Atkinson and John Papin. They are all training for next weekend’s 90-mile canoe race. It was getting dark when Mills first saw the fire at a campsite on an island in the distance.

“After looking at it for a few seconds, I looked at Nate and John and said, ‘This isn’t just a campfire, this is going to be a forest fire,'” Mills said.

They watched the fire spread quickly on Goose Island. Mills said she realized gas was involved.

“It burst, and then you could see what looked like an oil slick on the water, and the water itself was on fire for a while,” she said.

By this time, the sun had already set. Mills couldn’t see any other boats on the lake, so she and her two friends called police and the DEC emergency dispatch center in Ray Brook. Then they headed toward the fire.

“It probably takes us 10 minutes to paddle there, and in that time the entire undergrowth on that section of the windward side of the island is on fire,” Mills explained.

Photo of the Goose Island fire provided by NYSDEC

Three young men had camped on Goose Island and the group was still on land when Mills and her two friends arrived, so she called out to them to take only the essentials and leave the island.

“I mean, the wind is blowing up, the fire is blowing up,” Mills said. “You have no idea what’s going to erupt at this point in the summer and with the conditions we’ve had.”

The three men got into their canoe and paddled back to the boat ramp, where they met two forest rangers and six members of the Saranac Lake Village Fire Department.

Rick Yorkey is the fire department’s lead driver and was on the boat that went to Goose Island.

“At this time of year, I don’t think it will be anything major,” Yorkey said, “but when you come out of the Second Pond channel in the Lower Saranac, where Bluff [Island] and you turn left, you can see Goose Island and we could see it as soon as we turned the corner.”

The flames were two to three feet high. Campers told Yorkey and other first responders how the fire started.

“They just said they were trying to start their fire and the gas can caught fire. When they threw it in the lake there was vegetation burning and they put it out, they kicked it out. They tried to dump their cooler with ice on it but I think it must have just blown away, whatever was burning the trees must have been very flammable.”

The Village of Saranac Lake Fire Department has special equipment to fight fires like the one on Goose Island.

“We have little portable pumps,” Yorkey explained. “They’re called forestry pumps, and you just put them on the ground next to the water, throw a little piece of hose in. [and] We’ll just ramp it up and use the water directly in the lake to put out the fire.”

It took local firefighters several hours to extinguish the fire on Goose Island. Photo provided by Nate Atkinson

Yorkey said it took several hours to ensure there was no risk of a re-ignition. On Goose Island, the fire was mostly understory. Yorkey said the fire had spread to about a quarter of the island, which he estimated was about 50,000 square feet.

The bottom line? Yorkey advised against using gas to light a campfire.

“Many people think [gas] helps them to light the fire up there, [but] Gas is just so flammable that you don’t even need to put it near the fire or the fumes will get there.”

The DEC issued two tickets to the 28-year-old camper who set the fire and one ticket to the group for not having enough life jackets on their boat.