A fire lookout (sometimes also called a fire watcher) is a person assigned the duty to look for fire from atop a building known as a fire lookout tower. These towers are used in remote areas, normally on mountain tops with high elevation and a good view of the surrounding terrain, to spot smoke caused by a wildfire.
Once a possible fire is spotted, "Smoke Reports", or "Lookout Shots" are relayed to the local Emergency Communications Center (ECC), often by radio or phone. A fire lookout can use a device known as an Osborne Fire Finder to obtain the radial in degrees off the tower, and the estimated distance from the tower to the fire.[1]
Part of the lookout's duties include taking weather readings and reporting the findings to the Emergency Communications Center throughout the day. Often several lookouts will overlap in coverage areas and each will “cross” the same smoke, allowing the ECC to use triangulation from the radials to achieve an accurate location of the fire.
Once ground crews and fire suppression aircraft are active in fire suppression, the lookout personnel continue to search for new smoke plumes which may indicate spotting and alterations that pose risks to ground crews.
Working in a fire lookout tower in the middle of a wilderness area takes a hardy type of person, one who can work with no supervision, and is able to survive without any other human interaction. Some towers are accessible by automobile, but others are so remote a lookout must hike in, or be lifted in by helicopter. In many locations, even modern fire lookout towers do not have electricity or running water.
Most fire lookout jobs are seasonal through the fire season. Fire lookouts can be paid staff or volunteer staff. Some volunteer organizations in the United States have started to rebuild, restore and operate aging fire lookout towers.
Although it was considered as “man’s work” in the United States, women have been doing the job almost from its beginnings.[2]
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Ute Mountain Fire Lookout Tower on the Ashley National Forest in Utah - short version
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Deadwood Lookout in Idaho
Transcription
We're here today at the Ute tower site where we just completed restoration of the Ute tower. A fire tower. The last remaining one in Utah. The Ute tower was first built, constructed and completed in 1937 and was operated as a fire lookout tower. It's the last remaining fire lookout tower in Utah. Well the Ute tower is really significant to the local communities. They look at this and are just over joyed with the fact that we decided to renovate this and restore it. And the main reason is that it represents such an important part of the history of the area. And many people have experiences either coming up and looking at it or being a part of working here, and seeing it, and it had widespread community support. They're just excited about the completion of the tower. The tower's made out of wood, douglas fir that they milled. And over time, snow collects and water collects at the base and so in 1967 they did an evaluation of the tower and found out that there was major wood rot in the bottom and that the structural beams of the tower basically could fall over. So they did that repair in the 1980's, and rededication in 1987, that same type of damage had been happening, and we did another evaluation in 2008 and found the same type of rot in all four of the bottom legs. So we closed down the tower for safety purposes, our structural engineer indicated that the tower could fall at any time. We didn't want people up inside of it or underneath it. Because of the safety hazard. So we closed it down in 2008 and then we've been searching for funding and finally they began renovation where they replaced basically all four of the legs on the bottom and some of the cross pieces. To be able to come up here, see this and get an understanding of what they were doing and why they were doing fire suppression, this is one of the best places in Utah to be able to get an experience with that. And you go up and walk up the narrow stairs, you get up to the top of the catwalk, you look around and see the view and just getting an appreciation that this is a very remote location with the only connection you have with the outside world is basically a telephone line. People coming up here and watching fires, being in a very remote area and getting a sense of that is so different than the world we live in that has cars, roads, telephone poles, cell phones, everything like that. This allows you to have appreciation for history that you can't get in other places.
Countries/Regions that use fire lookouts
- United States
- Canada (B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia[3])
- Mexico
- Uruguay
- Brazil
- Greece
- Australia
- New Zealand
- Hong Kong
- Indonesia
- France
- Italy
- Portugal
- Cyprus
- Spain
- Germany
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- United Kingdom - during World War II (termed 'Fire Watchers') as part of Air Raid Precautions system.
- Israel
- Russia
- Kazakhstan
- South Africa
- Poland
- Norway[4]
Notable fire lookouts
- Hallie Morse Daggett – the first female fire lookout for the U.S. Forest Service
- Helen Dowe – Devil's Head Lookout at Pike National Forest (1918)
- Ramona Merwin and family – Vetter Mountain, raised her family in the lookout
- Howard "Razz" Gardner and Keith V. Johnson "The Lookout Air Raid" a little-known Japanese aircraft attack of Oregon, USA during World War II
- Roy Sullivan, worked as a fire lookout in his early career as a U.S. National Park Ranger, but was best known for having set a world record for surviving seven lightning strikes during his life.
- Jack Kerouac, whose books The Dharma Bums, Desolation Angels and Lonesome Traveler include accounts of his job as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascades during the summer of 1956.
- Edward Abbey, who was a fire lookout at Mt. Harkness (1966; Lassen National Park), Atacosa (1968; Coronado National Forest), North Rim (1969–1971; Grand Canyon National Park), Numa Ridge (1975; Glacier National Park), and Aztec Peak (1977–1979; Tonto National Forest).
- Doug Peacock, who was a fire lookout at Huckleberry and Scalplock in Glacier National Park from 1976 to 1984.
- Gary Snyder, who was a fire lookout at Crater Peak and Sourdough Mountain in the North Cascades.
- Philip Whalen, who was a fire lookout on Sourdough Mountain and Sauk Mountain in the North Cascades.
- Norman Maclean, who chronicled his experience in "USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky"
- Philip Connors, writer
- Thomas William Ah Chow was a Chinese-Australian who lived in the remote Moscow Villa in the 1940s.
- Rachel Lindgren , Jeopardy! champion
- Ferdinand Martinů, father of the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů, was a shoemaker, also worked as the church sexton and town fire watchman in the tower of the St. Jakub Church in Polička, Bohemia. Furthermore, Bohuslav Martinů was born in said tower.
- Margaret Thatcher, worked as a fire lookout in Grantham during the Second World War.[5]
In popular culture
The 2016 video game Firewatch follows the story of a fire lookout, Henry, in Shoshone National Forest after the Yellowstone fires of 1988.
Desolation Angels, a semi-autobiographical novel by Jack Kerouac published in 1965, the opening section of which is taken almost directly from the journal Kerouac kept when he was a fire lookout on Desolation Peak in the North Cascade mountains of Washington state.
See also
References
- ^ "Leif Haugen, Fire Lookout". American Forests. Retrieved 2023-10-12.
- ^ Gachman, Dina (2021-03-29). "Female Fire Lookouts Have Been Saving the Wilderness for Over a Century". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2021-04-18.
- ^ "Nova Scotia Wildfire Detection". Nova Scotia Government, Department of Natural Resources. Archived from the original on February 24, 2009. Retrieved February 24, 2009.
- ^ "Linnekleppen Aremark/Rakkestad". Visit Norway. Retrieved 2024-04-12.
- ^ Moore, Charles (2019). Margaret Thatcher: Herself Alone. Vol. 3. Penguin Books. p. 929. ISBN 978-0-241-32475-2.
External links
- Fire Lookouts (US Forest Service History Pages, Forest History Society)
- Ontario's Fire Tower Lookouts: Preserving their history
- Angeles National Forest Fire Lookout Association (Los Angeles, CA)
- Forest Fire Lookout Association
- Portugal Fire Tower Lookouts- click on the dots to see photos of each tower Archived 2006-08-10 at the Wayback Machine
- Lookout Vistas
- Fire Tower Lookouts in Australia
- The Fire Towers of New York
- "A Day in the Life of a Fire Lookout" in Marin County, California
- National Historic Lookout Register
- Former Fire Lookout Register
- Forest Fire Lookout Association
- California fire lookouts
- Lookout Charley, an online photo weblog of a USFS Volunteer Fire Lookout at Vetter Mountain, California Archived 2006-06-14 at the Wayback Machine