ESCANABA — The Department of Natural Resources has contained a fire near Round Lake in northeastern Delta County. On Sunday around 5:20 p.m., the DNR received a call about a wildfire near Round Lake.

DNR’s U.P. Resource Manager Celeste Chingwa said the fire was discovered around noon, but DNR did not know about it until roughly five hours later.

“There’s word that it had been found previous to that but, it was not reported to us until that night,” Chingwa said.

She said the fire was contained, but the fire spread to roughly 14.7 acres in the area.

Responders constructed a fire line around the fire with a tractor and plow to contain it.

“They have been doing extensive work trying to get it mopped up, but we have a lot of problems right now. The fuels have dried out in the soil, and so we have a lot of ground fire going on right now,” she explained.

She said this is due to the warmer weather and the lack of rain in the area.

She said she was hopeful that rain would be on the way to help with the ground fire, but that doesn’t seem likely in the forecast.

“They’ve been making progress, but like I said, there’s been some concerns with the ground fire going on that we’ll be out there for, you know, several days if we don’t get any kind of relief, (especially) if it keeps working its way down into the ground,” Chingwa said.

She said firefighters have used thousands of gallons of water to combat it.

On Tuesday alone, one unit carrying roughly 1,500 gallons of water needed to be refilled seven times.

Today, the area is determined to be at a very high fire danger area, according to Chingwa, and will likely stay that way through the weekend. She added that the current drought numbers are increasing in parts of the U.P.

“Anywhere from central to east U.P. – the drought numbers have been climbing,” she said.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a large portion of the U.P. is designed as DO abnormally dry.

To keep up with intensity levels of droughts in the area, visit droughtmonitor.unl.edu CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?MI.