The fire left much of western Carlton County devastated, mostly affecting Moose Lake, Cloquet, and Kettle River.

Cloquet was hardest hit by the fires; it was the worst natural disaster in Minnesota history in terms of the number of casualties in a single day.

It smoldered for two days, then came alive when a cold front brought stiff winds and a steep drop in humidity.

As the fire neared Moose Lake around 7:30 that evening, relief trains rescued a few hundred people.

One cause of the fire was reportedly sparks from the railroad tracks that lit grass and dry timber, but the rapid progression of the fire through northern Minnesota was caused by numerous factors, such as drought conditions, high winds, and a lack of firefighting equipment.

A relief worker reported that 30 bodies were piled in a cellar between Moose Lake and Kettle River.

Within Carlton and southern Saint Louis Counties, the towns of Brookston, Arnold, and Moose Lake were completely destroyed.

The inferno's victims were temporarily sheltered in buildings such as hospitals, schools, churches, armories, and private homes.

At about 3 p.m. on October 12, Lieutenant Karl A. Franklin and Captain Henry Tourtelotte of the Fourth Regiment of the National Guard were contacted to aid the Rice Lake Road area.

After speaking with Cloquet's mayor and its police chief, Robert McKercher, Tourtelotte and nine other people headed for Duluth to assemble his troops and offer immediate assistance.

Scores of men assembled in less than an hour and were then dispatched to several hazard sites to help extinguish the fire.

[6] The firefighters' efforts saved several important structures, among them the St. James Catholic Orphanage and the Nopeming Sanatorium.

Charles Mahnke, the Moose Lake member of the relief commission, told farmers, "We are going to put you back as well off as you were before."

Relief assistance aided the farming community, and with the commission's help the farmers were given places to stay and the means to regain what they had lost.

The Northwest Paper Company began production a week after the fire and gave Cloquet's citizens much-needed jobs.

Within five years, Cloquet had industrialized and rebuilt many of the lost railroads, and the citizens had moved from their Red Cross shelters into new houses.

The Moose Lake Area Historical Society annually honors the lives lost at the Soo Line Depot, which in 1995 was opened as a railroad and fire museum.