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Is "Fare for All" a Possibility for Wadena County? Sebeka Pool Swimming Lesson Registration
Sebeka pool swimming lesson registration will be held at the Sebeka City Hall on Saturday, May 17, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and on Monday, May 19, from 4:30-6:30 p.m.
Sebeka School Board to
Meet Tuesday, May 13
The Sebeka School Board of Education will meet on Tuesday, May 13, at 6:00 p.m. in the media center. This is a public meeting open to all who wish to attend.
Sebeka City Council Meeting Tuesday, May 13
The Sebeka City Council will convene in its regular monthly session on Tuesday evening, May 13, beginning at 6:00 p.m. Meetings are held in the meeting room at city hall. This is a public meeting open to all who wish to attend.
Sebeka American
Legion Auxiliary
News & Update
Sebeka American Legion Auxiliary Post 456 held their monthly meeting on May 1.
The 6th District Convention will be held in Sauk Rapids on May 30, 31, and June 1.
Reports were given on the smorgasbord, the annual reports, and the election of officers.
Volunteers are needed for the West Central Telephone Assn. meeting. Call Jane Komppa.
Poppy poster contest winners will be announced at the Memorial Day program.
The Auxiliary members attending the Memorial Day program will line up at 9:45 a.m. and march in with the Colors.
Poppy Day in Sebeka will be May 20.
Please wear a poppy as a small symbol of the great sacrifices given for each of us. Your donations will be appreciated and be used for our veterans support programs.
Thank you.
God bless America.
Anna Lalone, Unit Pres.
Students Learn Benefits of Saving Money
 Ava, a first grade student at Sebeka school, recently was awarded a $50 U.S. Savings Bond by Chuck Horsager, vice president of First National Bank of Menahga & Sebeka. She won this baseed on her completed "Money-wise" certificate which was selected based on the color and content of her work. Bank members recently visited the school for presentation on money and also conducted a bank tour for the students. The bank is donating $5 to each first grader to bgin or continue a savings account. Other "Money-wise" certificates are on display in the bank lobby.
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TOP NEWS 5-7 Who Can Forget the Huntersville Fire of 1976?
 The body of an 8-point buck, carcass full intact, its hair burned off completely. As with most animals in the fire, it died of smoke inhalation before the flames reached it.
I was only 23 years old and still a “newcomer” to Minnesota, having moved to Sebeka just a year before. I enjoyed listening to my father-in-law, Nestor Komppa, recount happenings in the area that occurred during his lifetime. He seemed like a walking history book to me. Only in my early 20s, I had difficulty remembering what happened the year before, yet Nestor could recall events that had happened decades before I was ever born. I was amazed that he could remember events and their dates with such ease. But before that year was over, events would happen to seal it in my mind for the rest of my life. The year was 1976 – the year of The Drought. It was the worst drought this state had experienced in 40 years. Fires began breaking out in the spring and continued all summer. By August and September, the landscape was so parched that even a spark from a vehicle could kindle a blaze. Farmers and others were cautioned not to drive their tractors or pickups into the fields. By October 1, more than 140,000 acres had burned in 3,400 fires recorded by Department of Natural Resources foresters, including the now-famous Huntersville-Badoura fire. The cause of the Huntersville fire was never confirmed, but it was thought that it started from a tractor being used to bale hay. DNR reports state that the first man to attack the fire was a farmer who used his tractor to plow a furrow down the field along the east side of the fire. In battling the blaze, the farmer got close enough to the flames to scorch his face and singe his hair, but the fire raced right over the plowed ground and into willow brush. What would come to be known as the “worst fire since the dust bowl days of the 1930s” had begun. “The most dreaded sound, the fire alarm, sounded in Sebeka and Menahga at 11:30 Tuesday morning, signaling the worst fire to date in this area,” the Sebeka Menahga Review Messenger reported. Just two minutes earlier, at 11:28 a.m. on September 7, the spotter in the Nimrod fire tower reported seeing smoke about three miles southeast of Huntersville.  Montana firefighters had been in Minnesota since early August. They monitored the fire line long after the initial fire was put out because the fire had gotten into peat bogs and smoldered, erupting occasionally into hot spots. Winter snow finally put the peat fires out.
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The DNR forester at the Nimrod station immediately headed for the fire, with the station’s caterpillar tractor and fire plow following. A nearby 20-man crew was also notified and responded quickly to the scene. It took the forester – Dan Casey, if memory serves me well – only minutes to determine that this had the potential to be a bad fire. By radio, helicopter and bomber water drops were requested. The first drop of fire retardant by the bomber was made about an hour after the call went out.
By 1:00 p.m., the fire was one mile long and a quarter-mile wide. The flames raced north through jackpine forests and swamps, jumped Highway 64, propelled by 30 mph winds. By 4:30, it had grown to one mile wide and eight and half miles long. At 5:00, the wind’s direction changed the path and intensity of the fire, reported Forester Allen Wickman, and the fire started galloping toward the southeast across a nine-mile front. At times the blaze leaped ahead a quarter-mile in five minutes or less. The wind velocity and direction kept shifting all afternoon, making the inferno impossible to control. It was a change in wind direction that saved Badoura Tree Nursery, when the flames were less than a half-mile away.
Smoke from the fire could be seen for miles. It billowed to 4,500 feet. Co-worker Susie Larson and I closed up the newspaper office, hung up a sign – "Gone to the Fire" – and with a Polaroid camera in hand, drove in the direction of the billowing tower of smoke to "cover the fire" for the newspaper. Editor Jack Bloomquist was away that day. The fire scene was a busy place to be.
“Firemen from Sebeka, Menahga, Wadena, Staples, Verndale and Park Rapids responded to the call, as well as busloads of high school boys from Sebeka and Menahga who volunteered. National Guard members from Wadena, Park Rapids and Aitkin, and DNR personnel from all over Minnesota were on the scene by evening,” the newspaper reported.
By 9:00 Tuesday evening, the wind had decreased, nightfall brought with it cooler air, and a light rain started to fall. These conditions worked together to subdue the wildfire, and firefighters worked all night to make sure the blaze did not resume its destructive rage with the rising sun. By morning, a 40-plus mile firebreak encircled the fire, and vigilant firefighters were on the scene to quickly put out any flames that broke through that circle on Wednesday. Inside the fire line, the fire was contained but not put out. It had gotten into the peat bogs, where it smoldered through the fall until winter snows put finally it out.
The toll of the Huntersville Fire included nearly 23,000 acres of forests, fields and marshes, six occupied and several unoccupied summer cabins, hunting shacks, one store, and a few abandoned buildings. The loss of wildlife was undoubtedly heavy, but not one person was killed or seriously injured, although a number of residents and firefighters experienced desperate escapes from the blaze. The estimated toll of the fire in dollars was nearly $1 million.
I thought of 1976 last summer when the dry conditions parched the earth again. Other people did, too, and when talking about the dry conditions would sometimes ask, “Do you remember that dry year when there was the Huntersville fire? What year was that?”
“1976,” I could respond without effort.
And I would remember Nestor and smile.
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