Eyes of the Storm : Towers Give Volunteer Fire Lookouts an On-Target View of Lightning

Bolt after bolt, lightning moved slowly but steadily toward this 7,882-foot mountaintop in the San Bernardino National Forest about 15 miles southeast of Lake Arrowhead.

June Glenn, 70, a volunteer lookout in the steel tower atop Keller Peak, watched the approaching storm apprehensively. Below her, five young people sat on boulders near their car, fascinated by the pyrotechnics in the sky.

Twice, Glenn leaned over the tower railing and warned them to leave. “They looked up at me, laughed, waved and stayed.”

Admittedly frustrated, she yelled once more: “Look! I don’t care if you get killed. But think of the paperwork you will cause and all the investigations we will have to go through if the lightning hits you.”

Reluctantly, the youths scrambled off the rocks, got into their car and drove down the mountain, Glenn said.

Within a minute or two, a bolt of lightning slashed through the darkened sky, flashing between the boulders and the tower.

During another memorable thunderstorm that hovered over Keller Peak, Glenn stood for three hours on a little wooden stool with glass insulator feet to protect herself.

“It was the only time I was in the tower when it was hit. It was terrifying, a blinding flash of white light, unbelievably bright. . . . My first thought was: ‘I’ve been killed.’ Incredibly, I wasn’t even hurt,” she said.

The number of volunteer fire lookouts is dwindling nationwide, but Glenn heads a group of 22 volunteers at Keller and Strawberry peaks in the Lake Arrowhead area. Both towers were closed by the U.S. Forest Service in 1981 and remained closed until the volunteer lookouts reopened them in 1985.

In the early 1950s, the Forest Service had 5,060 manned fire lookout towers across the United States. Today, there are fewer than 500.

The number of manned towers has been greatly reduced with the coming of sophisticated technology, satellites, computerized maps of lightning strikes, increased airplane traffic and more people living in the mountains or driving through them.

California has more active fire lookout towers than any other state--about 150, half in national forests and half operated by other agencies.

During the May-through-November fire season, the San Bernardino National Forest staffs four lookout towers--three with volunteers and one with a paid staff member, said Judy Behrens, a forest spokeswoman.

Most volunteers are retired, such as Glenn, who worked at McDonnell Douglas as a bid estimator and has lived in nearby Arrowbear for 10 years. One woman was a lookout at Keller Peak for several years until--at age 80-- she found it too difficult to breathe at the high altitude.

“On crystal-clear days, you can see as far away as Mt. Whitney, 173 miles northwest as the crow flies,” Glenn said. “You can see ships at sea, the white dome of the Mt. Palomar Observatory, downtown Los Angeles. I feel like I can reach out and touch Catalina Island.

“It’s a different world above the clouds, far away from my other cares and worries.”