Tower Sentries Nip Forest Fires in Bud

Seven days a week when it isn’t raining, Henry Hasselhan sits alone in a closet-size room 100 feet up and stares into space.

If a puff of smoke appears, the fire tower observer must quickly plot its location with help from another tower and report it by short-wave radio.

In the height of the forest fire season, Hasselhan may do that several times in a day.

From March 15 until May 15, when humidity is low and there is little shade, sunlight may ignite the dry forest floor, said Ben Petrini, an assistant warden with the state Division of Parks, Forestry and Recreation.

Hasselhan’s job may seem tedious, but his window-lined “office” has one of the finest views in all of southern New Jersey. It also sways in the wind.

“Sometimes it gets boring, sometimes it gets very busy,” Hasselhan said. “A lot of times you just sit here. On rainy days, you either go home or down to the shop to help work on the fire trucks.”

Light Summer Duty

The watchers put in shorter days during the summer, then go back to the seven-days-a-week routine for about a month in autumn, when leaves fall and dry out. They spend the winter in the forestry department shop building new fire trucks. The job pays $14,000 to $20,000 a year.

Curious visitors sometimes ask to see the towers, and Hasselhan never stops them.

“A lot of them reach the third flight and can’t make it because they get scared of the height,” he said.

At 9:45 a.m. each day, Hasselhan checks the weather gauges at the foot of the tower. Then, after catching his breath from the long climb up the stairs, he checks in with Petrini in the Division C office in Mays Landing.

Division C covers still-forested sections of southern New Jersey, including the Pinelands. It has six towers, built in the 1930s, from which an area of roughly 100,000 acres can be viewed, Petrini said. Division A handles the northwestern corner of the state, and Division B towers guard forests in the middle of the state.

This year, more than 250 fires, most of them minor, have been doused in the six southernmost counties.

Some Smoke’s OK

A sheet on the tower wall gives the locations of industries and power plants that emit smoke. Hasselhan pointed to a white cloud in the distance and explained that it was from an asphalt plant.

“I know the difference after sitting up here all this time,” he said. “You know what smoke looks like. A house fire doesn’t move and looks black. A woods fire changes color and changes direction.”

When Hasselhan spots smoke, he immediately calls another tower to confirm it. They then locate the smoke with a surveying device and call the warden, who sends a firefighting team.

Hasselhan has been a fire tower observer for almost four years. The novelty of having a “terrific view” wore off quickly, he said, but the tower duty is just a step in his career.

“I’d rather be out fighting fires,” he said.