As a pre-forestry student I am embarassed to have to ask this on here. (I should be ANSWERING questions!) But I have yet to get a solid straight answer, so I want the opinions of this board:

I recently cut some oak firewood from a state forest (with a permit) in MN. The red oaks had died from oak wilt. My best tree is a red oak, and I also have a white oak. How dangerous is it to store this firewood on my property? I plan on splitting and stacking it before the snow melts.

There were no leaves on the oaks this winter, which leads me to believe they died the previous summer (2008). Does this theory hold any water or does oak wilt cause leaves to fall off right away?