Additional aid soon could be on the way to assist with northeastern Minnesota’s wildfires, as St. Louis County Board chair Annie Harala declared a state of local emergency and disaster Monday.

She signed the declaration eight days after the Camp House Fire began, and one week after the Jenkins Creek and Munger Shaw fires ignited. The three wildfires have combined to scorch more than 30,000 acres of land in St. Louis County, destroying more than 150 structures, including houses and cabins, in their wake.

A county news release described the declaration as a procedural step toward requesting state public disaster assistance for wildfire response and recovery activities.

Harala’s declaration will remain valid for up to three days or until the County Board has an opportunity to gather and vote on a declaration. Commissioners plan to hold an emergency meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the county board room of the St. Louis County Courthouse in Duluth. Sheriff Gordon Ramsay is slated to update commissioners on wildfire activities and response at that meeting.

The St. Louis County Sheriff’s Emergency Management Division is working with affected municipalities to document and assess damages, which will then be reported to the Minnesota Homeland Security and Emergency Management to determine eligibility for state public disaster assistance.

Meanwhile, even as crews continued to make progress controlling the three wildfires, the weather threatened to make their work more difficult.

The return of “near-critical fire weather conditions” Monday included gusting northeast winds bringing cool, dry air north of U.S. 2.

Gusting winds and lower relative humidity in the 15% to 25% range are expected in the same areas Tuesday, the National Weather Service said in Duluth. While rain was overspreading southern Minnesota late Monday, not much of it was expected to reach the Arrowhead.

On Monday morning, authorities said the Munger Shaw Fire southeast of Cotton had charred 1,259 acres and was 95% contained.

The perimeter of the Jenkins Creek Fire southeast of Hoyt Lakes was finally partially contained Monday morning after scorching 16,332 acres.

The U.S. Forest Service’s Eastern Area Incident Management Team reported that the fire perimeter was 6% contained.

“Great progress was made over the weekend as personnel took advantage of the cooler, wetter conditions,” the fire update read.

However, gusty, dry weather elevated the risk to the unincorporated community of Skibo and the city of Hoyt Lakes.

The Camp House Fire near Brimson was 40% contained Monday morning after burning 12,277 acres.

No evacuation orders had changed Monday.

Authorities say the causes of the fires remain under investigation.

Wayne Prokosch, of River City Welding in Stockholm, Wis., may never have to buy another drink in the St. Croix River Valley.

Prokosch spent much of the weekend working to remove an abandoned 54-foot cruiser from the St. Croix River near Hudson, Wis. — a move that’s led to numerous people up and down the river offering to buy him dinner and drinks. People were even cheering from shore as he towed the Sweet Destiny down river on Sunday morning, he said.

“I’m not a hero,” he said. “We do this every day on the job, so it’s no big deal to us. Everybody’s just happy to see it gone, you know? And so am I. I got sick of the phone calls about it. There’s not very many people who are capable of doing the project. Sometimes you just got to do the right thing, you know?”

Prokosch started the job, along with three other men, on Friday morning and got the boat — called Sweet Destiny — to the Hudson Excursion docks in Hudson owned by St. Croix River Cruises. Prokosch worked with Josh Stokes, a River City Welding employee, and Gordy and Dave Jarvis from St. Croix Cruises and the Afton House Inn to get the water pumped out from the boat and towed away.

Prokosch had a prior commitment on Saturday — his daughter was graduating from the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire — so the boat stayed docked at the Hudson Excursion dock with constant pumping and supervision, Dave Jarvis said.

By 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning, Prokosch was back on site with his barge and crane.

“We had our equipment up in the area anyway, so we just decided we could take a few hours out of our day,” Prokosch said. “I figured we would just swing in there and make it happen, and get rid of the story and get rid of the headache and just all the crap that went with it.”

It took until about 1:30 p.m. to make the 50-mile journey to Hager City, Wis., which included a journey through Lock #3 on the Mississippi River.

“We had to keep the pumps running the whole time because the boat was leaking like crazy — 15 gallons every 10 minutes,” he said.

Once they got to Hager City, across the river from Red Wing, Minn., crews hauled the boat out on a hydraulic trailer and put it on the back of a semitractor trailer belonging to EdgeWater Boat Storage & Transport for the five-mile trip to the company’s storage area, he said.

Prokosch, who has worked on the river since 1992, said he has done work for the cities of Hudson and Prescott, Wis., in the past.

“That’s another reason why I did it: just to do a public duty,” he said. “I just wanted to get rid of all the talk about the boat on the river and just put it behind us.”

He said he hopes Grayson McNew, the man who abandoned the boat on Beer Can Island in August 2024, after it started to take on water, learned a valuable lesson from the experience.

“If it sounds too good to be true, most of the time, it usually is,” Prokosch said.

A man who hopes to restore the boat paid River City Welding $5,000 for their work; the job would normally cost much more than that, said Dave Jarvis, who helped coordinate the removal. The man, who asked not to be identified, also paid $1,300 EdgeWater for their services, Jarvis said.

“All these government agencies couldn’t get it done,” he said. “But two river veterans (Prokosch and Gordy Jarvis) could. It’s been an eyesore and, frankly, an embarrassing thing for our community for too long.”

McNew, of Afton, owes the City of Hudson about $21,000 in fines for abandoning the boat, Hudson City Administrator Brentt Michalek said Monday.

“It’s already gone to collections,” he said. “We could choose to waive some of it, but there are costs that are already incurred by the city that he is responsible for. This wasn’t a cheap thing for us. A lot of time was spent trying to get this individual to move his boat.”

The Jarvises plan to work with the Hudson business community to raise extra funds for Prokosch, Gordy Jarvis said.

“Wayne deserves some some recognition,” Gordy Jarvis said. “He’s such a humble guy that he doesn’t really want anything, but he’s so deserving, and the community knows it, and they want to be a part of that.”

Dave Jarvis said he hopes the man who paid the initial fee to remove the boat gets it fixed up and seaworthy again.

“Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder,” he said. “All I can say is, God bless anyone who wants to try to fix it up. It’s going to take a lot of love and the right knowledge and the right person. But it may happen. You never know. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

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The Twins and Cleveland Guardians did what they could to get a game in on Monday night at Target Field. But in the end, the weather wouldn’t cooperate for long enough.

The two teams made it through three innings on Monday before the game was officially suspended around 9:10 p.m.

The game is scheduled to resume on Tuesday at 5:10 p.m. with the regularly-scheduled game starting 30 minutes later. But with more rain in the forecast on Tuesday, it seems unlikely that nearly two full games will be played.

The Twins had just taken a 2-1 lead in the second inning when the rain, which had been coming down for most of the game, intensified.

At 7:13 p.m., the two teams left the field for the first rain delay of the night. As the rain slowed, managers Rocco Baldelli and Stephen Vogt conferred with the umpires, eventually moving their conversation from the third base side to the middle of the field.

Shortly after their meeting broke up, players re-emerged on the field.

That rain delay lasted 61 minutes, after which the two teams returned for 14 minutes before the tarp went right back on the field at 8:28 p.m.

At around 9:10 p.m., the game was officially suspended. Fans who were in attendance on Monday will receive a voucher for a future game.

After the Guardians struck first off Bailey Ober to begin the game, the Twins used an RBI hit from Ty France to even the score in the bottom of the first.

An inning later, Willi Castro drove in Harrison Bader, giving the Twins the lead.

That was where things stood when the first delay was called. After they returned, Ryan Jeffers struck out, leaving Castro on second base.

They played one more inning after that before heading back inside for good.

A 59-year-old man charged in January with raping a 71-year-old St. Paul woman he met on Facebook is now accused of committing a 2013 sexual assault at a Maplewood motel.

Thao Xiong’s DNA came back as a match through an initiative to analyze a backlog of untested sexual assault kits, according to a Ramsey County District Court criminal complaint charging him Friday by warrant with felony first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Thao Xiong, shown in January 2025 (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Xiong remained out of custody on Monday. He was released from jail on March 21 after posting a $50,000 bond in the January case that also charges him with first-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Xiong allegedly committed that offense while on probation for a 2020 first-degree criminal sexual conduct conviction involving a 41-year-old woman during a night of drinking at his St. Paul apartment in July 2019.

According to the Friday’s criminal complaint:

A woman reported to police on July 15, 2013, that she had just been forcibly sexually assaulted at a motel off U.S. 61 in Maplewood by a man she knew as “Chue Lee,” identified in November 2020 through a DNA match as Xiong.

The woman said she had been talking with “Chue” for two days over the phone, that she did not know him previously and had assumed he got her number from someone she knew.

She said he called her on July 15 and said he was coming to Minnesota from Wisconsin and wanted her to show him around. They also planned to go for a walk by a lake.

She met Xiong in the parking lot of a St. Paul grocery store, where he suggested they take one car and offered to drive. She agreed and got into his car. He drove past the lake, telling her they were going to get something to eat first. Rather than going to a restaurant, he brought her to the motel, saying he wanted to get some rest before eating.

Xiong rented the room and once inside began “ripping her clothes apart,” the complaint says. She said he “overpowered” her and raped her.

She went to a hospital for a sexual assault examination the same day. A nurse examiner noted bruising to the woman’s body and she complained about areas where she said Xiong had bitten her.

She told the nurse the assault began immediately after they got into the motel room and Xiong locked the door. After the assault, she said, Xiong appeared scared, so she got in his car. Xiong dropped her off and about 15 minutes later he called her and left a “cruel message,” which she later provided to police.

The complaint says motel video shows Xiong arriving with the woman in a gray Toyota Prius just after 5 p.m. He went into the motel office and then moved the car in front of a room. The two entered the room at 5:15 p.m. and left 45 minutes later.

An investigator in late July 2020 discovered the sexual assault kit, which had not been tested. It was brought to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and four months later an unidentified male DNA profile taken from swabs of the woman was entered into the state’s DNA databases and the National DNA Index System.

The BCA notified St. Paul police on Nov. 4, 2020, that Xiong’s DNA, obtained from his 2019 sexual assault case, matched the DNA in the 2013 assault. Police tried to contact the woman but were unsuccessful, the complaint says.

Last March, police were told DNA collected from Xiong in the January case matched the DNA found on the swabs taken from the 2013 victim, the complaint says.

Police tried to locate the woman and reached her on April 10 after her son called to ask why they were trying to contact his mother who does not speak English, the complaint says. She told police through an interpreter she “had been waiting for a very long time for an update on her case and wants him prosecuted for sexually assaulting her,” the complaint says.

Police sent the case to the attorney’s office for charging consideration last month.

Kate Courtney, Xiong’s attorney in the January case, said Monday she could not comment on Friday’s charge because she has been out of town and has not read the complaint.

Previous charges

According to January’s complaint, St. Paul police were dispatched to the 71-year-old woman’s apartment in the Summit-University neighborhood about 6:30 p.m. Jan. 28 after she reported she had just been forcefully sexually assaulted by a man, who was later identified as Xiong.

She told police someone must have given Xiong her phone number because he called, asking to meet. She agreed, and invited him over. When he entered the apartment, she told police, he pushed her into her bedroom, took off her clothes and raped her.

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She gave police a Facebook profile that Xiong used to contact her. As an officer pulled up the profile, she immediately said, “that’s him,” the complaint states. He was arrested Jan. 28 after police obtained a search warrant for his apartment in St. Paul’s Payne-Phalen neighborhood and found him hiding under his bed.

Court records show that Xiong reached a plea deal with prosecutors in the 2019 case and admitted to fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct in exchange for a first-degree charge being dismissed. He was sentenced to 231 days in jail, which was time that he had already served after his arrest, and put on supervised probation for 10 years.

Xiong has no other convictions, besides two petty misdemeanor traffic violations.