![\"Tom](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/PDX2TQCQJZDXZPXWRYP2ZPHKRY.jpg\")
Tom and John Connelly on the beach of a lake in Canada.(Courtesy \/ John Connelly)<\/p>\nOMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – Two Omaha brothers on a fishing trip in a remote Canadian wilderness park narrowly escaped a wildfire that destroyed their campsite minutes after they fled.<\/p>\n
Tom and John Connelly were four days into a planned 10-day trip inside Quetico Provincial Park in Canada, just across the border from Minnesota\u2019s Boundary Waters, when flames began closing in on their island campsite from three directions.<\/p>\n
Tom and John Connelly on the beach of a lake in Canada.(Courtesy \/ John Connelly)<\/p>\n
Tom Connelly was cleaning fish when he spotted the flames.<\/p>\n
\u201cI looked up and I said, oh my God, look John \u2014 there was a huge flame right over there. Let\u2019s start getting ready to go. We got to pack everything up. This thing could come towards us in a matter of minutes,\u201d Tom said.<\/p>\n
The brothers packed their gear into a canoe and made an SOS call. But leaving immediately in the dark was not an option. Smoke was so thick they could only see a few feet ahead, and navigating miles of wilderness lakes and portages without light posed its own dangers.<\/p>\n
They chose to stay put, monitor the flames, and wait for dawn.<\/p>\n
By 5:15 a.m., fires were burning on three sides of their island.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, John, we gotta go. Because if we don\u2019t go, we\u2019re gonna die. We\u2019re gonna be gone,\u201d Tom said.<\/p>\n
With enough light to navigate, the brothers pushed their canoe into the water and paddled east through walls of smoke. Three minutes after they left, their campsite was gone. The full escape took 12 hours.<\/p>\n
John Connelly said the brothers stayed calm throughout.<\/p>\n
\u201cTogether, we weren\u2019t fighting, we weren\u2019t yelling. It was actually pretty relaxed. We just knew we had to stick in it for the long haul,\u201d John said.<\/p>\n
Tom credited skill and preparation \u2014 not luck \u2014 with getting them out alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to be skilled and you need to be proficient. Because if you are proficient and skilled, you can feel confident that you\u2019re making the right choice. And if you have that confidence \u2014 even in a very difficult situation \u2014 you can succeed,\u201d Tom said.<\/p>\n
The brothers said each other\u2019s presence made the biggest difference. Tom said John\u2019s strength and confidence kept him going. John credited Tom\u2019s ability to navigate through the heavy smoke.<\/p>\n
The Connellys made it back to Omaha safely. <\/p>\n
Tom said he couldn\u2019t have done it without John \u2014 that John\u2019s strength and confidence kept him going. <\/p>\n
And John said the same about Tom\u2019s ability to navigate through smoke so thick they could only see a few feet in front of them. <\/p>\n
They both said they were scared, but together they just focused on getting the job done.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 WOWT. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) – Two Omaha brothers on a fishing trip in a remote Canadian wilderness park narrowly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[38392,17,46011,2867,46013,46007,46008,46010,46002,46012,46005,46003,46004,46009,12729,46006,6738],"class_list":["post-138916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-adventure","tag-canada","tag-canada-fishing","tag-canada-wildfires","tag-exciting","tag-john-connelly","tag-minnesota-boundary-waters","tag-minnesota-fishing","tag-omaha","tag-omaha-brothers","tag-omaha-communty-news","tag-omaha-nebraska","tag-omaha-news","tag-quetico-provincial-park","tag-smoke","tag-tom-connelly","tag-wildfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}