These days, the sustenance at Hugo’s Bar in Brimson, Minnesota isn’t your standard pub fare. The tables where folks normally take classes for building fishing rods are now piled with diapers, tarps, thick gloves, contractor bags, and totes.
A small group huddles around a table. They hug, share a laugh, they cry. They discuss things they’ve lost, and they speak hopefully of rebuilding once the Northland Wildfires abate.
“We lost a lot,” a homeowner shares with Debbie Ecklund, who’s helping to manage the resource center, “the bar, the furniture, all handmade.”
“Stuff that you made?” She asks.
“No, the house was made in 1906. I wasn’t around to help.”
Debbie and the homeowner share a laugh at that.
Since the onset of the Brimson wildfire the owners of Hugo’s Bar, Jesse and Jessica Willemarck, converted their establishment into a 24-hour resource hub, sleeping in four-hour shifts to maintain round-the-clock services for wildfire relief.
“I don’t know what we would have done without Hugo’s here doing this for us – without Jess and Jessica doing this,” says Fire Chief Randy Freyholtz. “This has been amazing. The support, the community outreach has been phenomenal.”
As the crowd grows, Chief Freyholtz can be seen checking in on families and making sure his neighbors have everything they need. After he’s made the rounds and talked to everyone, he sits down at a table with Red Cross volunteers.
“Some of us [firefighters] have been evacuated,” he explains, “but so far none of our structures have been affected, so we’ve been lucky in that aspect. Very lucky. For how fast this fire’s been moving, we’ve been very lucky that we haven’t lost anybody.”
Chief Freyholtz and his small group of volunteer firefighters have been fighting the fire since day one. And he’s been evacuated from his home, sleeping in his truck at the fire station when not committing his waking hours to combatting the flames threatening his community.
“And how are you doing?” a Red Cross volunteer asks Chief Freyholtz.
“I’m doing good. I’m tired,” he says, “I think it’s starting to catch up with me finally. Now that things are starting to slow down and I’m sitting down more.”
Rain during the weekend brought some respite. And information reports at Hugo’s say they’re full on donated goods and focused on distributing them to the people affected while donating the rest to food pantries and other community organizations to ensure nothing goes to waste.
To help reach people, Red Cross volunteers will be at Hugo’s to assess individual disaster care needs, such as health, mental health, and spiritual care. They’ll also use the site as a hub for working directly to provide support for those who have lost their homes to the fires.
If you or someone you know has been displaced by the Northland Fires, call 1-800-RED-CROSS.
Story and photos by Nate Russell/American Red Cross Volunteer
American Red Cross Minnesota and Dakotas Region 