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Immediately after the storm, dedicated volunteers and crews from the United States Forest Service and Minnesota Department of Natural Resources worked tirelessly to address some of the devastation before winter arrived, but in the years that followed, attention and fears turned to a second and possibly even more devastating disaster: Mile after mile of once lush and now dead trees had turned into tinder that could fuel an immense wildfire. In response, the Forest Service created a Wildland Fire Use plan, establishing specific criteria for responding to fires in the affected areas of the BWCA. The plan defines where fires will be allowed to burn and other areas where protective actions will be taken. At present, more than 49,000 acres of National Forest land affected by the blow down have been managed to reduce fuels and approximately 40,000 more acres have been targeted for prescribed burning.

Meanwhile, Mother Nature had her own plan. After several quiet summers, the first major wildfire within the blow-down disaster area occurred August 2005. More than 1,000 acres north of Seagull Lake in the northeastern BWCAW burned.