Lookout Tower Is Back as First Line of Fire Defense

Scouts riding in small planes can spot smoke from thousands of feet above. Infrared technology can map blazes from miles away.

But sometimes, for fire detection, nothing beats a human being, peering through binoculars, inside a “lighthouse of the land,” an old-fashioned fire lookout.

After an absence of nearly two decades, fire lookouts have returned to Southern California forests, part of a national trend that in recent years has seen a resurgence of the tiny one-room cabins with uninterrupted, 360-degree views of the treetops.

Perched on stilts atop peaks as high as 13,000 feet above sea level, many of the nation’s lookout towers had fallen into disuse by the 1980s, victims of budget cuts, technological innovations and, in Southern California, smog.

Forestry officials are initiating a survey of how many lookouts have been restored and restaffed in recent years, both on federal and state lands.

The Forest Fire Lookout Assn. estimates that there are 2,000 lookouts nationwide, about half of them staffed. In the 1980s, only a few hundred were in use.

In Southern California, a dedicated corps of volunteers has begun to repair and restaff the lookouts--most of which were built in the 1930s and ‘40s by the Civilian Conservation Corps and were once staffed by a single employee who lived alone all summer.

“I think there’s a certain romance in fire lookouts,” said Kris Assel, executive director of the San Bernardino National Forest Assn., a nonprofit group that has resurrected seven of eight lookouts there. “It’s a neat piece of history that fits into modern forest management.”

It’s been 100 years since a timber cook was assigned to a hilltop tree to watch for wildfires in Bertha Hill, Idaho--what many consider the birth of the modern fire lookout. By the 1940s and ‘50s, the number of fire lookouts had swelled to nearly 8,000.

This summer, as the West experiences an intensely dangerous fire season, more than 400 volunteers are stationed at lookouts in the San Bernardino and Angeles national forests. The Cleveland and Los Padres forests do not have working lookouts; volunteers hope to revive them in a few years.

The job of the fire watcher, alone among the trees, has long captured the imagination. Jack Kerouac wrote of the appeal and quiet beauty of the two summer months he spent on a lookout in Washington in “The Dharma Bums”:

“I saw a sea of marshmallow clouds flat as a roof and extending miles and miles in every direction.... All I had to do was keep an eye on all horizons for smoke and run the two-way radio and sweep the floor.”

Some of today’s fire watchers hope to share the history of America’s lookouts with the many hikers, bikers and others who pass by. Others are retired firefighters who have found, with the support of the U.S. Forest Service, a new way to serve the people who live below.

“It’s all one big family,” said George Morey, a screen installer who with his wife, Pam, runs the Angeles National Forest Fire Lookout Assn. “We are from all walks of life, but we all love the same thing.”

The Moreys, who live in the San Bernardino forest, joined that forest’s lookout program nine years ago. “We went to training,” said Pam Morey, “and got more and more involved. Now, between work and that, it’s our life.”

The San Bernardino group originally hoped to reopen the sites as “interpretive centers” where visitors could learn about fire prevention and lookout history.

As interest in the history of the lookouts grew, so did interest in their original mission--a mission that was aided by stricter emissions rules that had helped clear much of the smog that once hindered smoke-tracking from above.

Lookout volunteers now are also rigorously trained by forest officials in weather reporting and radio operations. In the San Bernardino, volunteers must undergo 22 hours of classroom instruction before participating in supervised in-tower training.

“It’s very similar to the way the National Ski Patrol volunteers work,” said Keith Argow, chairman of the Forest Fire Lookout Assn., a national group. “There’s a dedicated crew of people who can get things done that employees can’t.

“The San Bernardino is to be commended for setting a national standard that no other forest has since copied,” he added. “But the Angeles is coming on strong.”

Volunteers reopened two Angeles lookouts in 1998 and 1999 and hope to open a third soon.

Mike McIntyre, the Angeles forest’s heritage resource program manager, said that after some initial skepticism, forest officials welcome their aid in detecting fires. “At first, people didn’t understand the program,” he said. “But now they see how consistent the volunteers have been in their work, and how they have helped with fire reports.”

Now, McIntyre said, “I believe everybody sees the worth of the program and supports it. And the volunteers have become good ambassadors for the forest.”

Already this year, lookouts have spotted one fire in the Angeles and three in the San Bernardino.

“That’s a lot,” said Assel. “An average year will get three first reports.”

In regions with a heavy concentration of what foresters call wildland/urban interface--areas in which metropolitan centers abut forests and chaparral--forest fires could threaten the urban centers nearby. That’s why speed is so important to firefighters in the San Bernardino and Angeles.

Despite the 21st century technology available to firefighters, human vigilance can prevent a blaze from becoming an inferno.

“In order for infrared to pick it up, a fire has to be five-plus acres,” said Pam Morey. Satellites can spot fires, she added, but there’s as much as a 15-minute window between pictures. “We can spot a fire in a matter of minutes, and can get it stopped a lot sooner.”

In two years, the Moreys have logged more than 100,000 miles on their Chevy pickup, shuttling between home and two lookouts in the Angeles. Sometimes, Pam Morey said, it takes two hours to reach the whitewashed cabin at the top of Vetter Mountain.

“I guess I kind of like the program,” she said with a shrug.

The Moreys have decorated the cabin with photos and plaques honoring the lookout’s past. Below the American flag flies a Smokey Bear flag--part of George’s sizable collection of Smokey memorabilia.

“This is our baby,” said George Morey, his eyes darting across a hillside with scrub brush, Coulter pine and yucca.

It is work, he said, that entails both tedium and excitement.

The lookout had gone into service at 9 a.m., as it does almost every day from May to October. Volunteers typically work in four- and eight-hour shifts.

An hour into his shift, George Morey had already taken a weather reading, measured the wind, and was training volunteer Bill Albrecht, a retired NASA engineer, to use the Osborne Fire-Finder, an oversized compass-like contraption that is the standard navigational tool in a lookout.

In the Angeles, the Osbornes are stored behind a double padlocked door when not in use. “You can lose the radio, you can lose the binoculars,” George Morey said. “But you’d better not lose the Osborne.”

He pointed out a “smoke report,” which a volunteer must fill out before calling in a fire over a battery-powered walkie-talkie.

A volunteer notes the volume and type of smoke (thin, drifting, blanket) and, perhaps most important, its color. Black smoke is emitted by a burning car or manzanita; white by light grass; and gray by heavier or drier grass.

Pam Morey recalled her first fire as “pretty darn exciting.”

“I had to guide the planes and trucks,” she said. “It’s awesome. It’s really nervous-making too, because you know when you make that call, you are getting out all these aircraft and units.”

“Any lookout will tell you,” George Morey said, “when you first spot smoke, your adrenaline goes crazy.” He gestured with one arm to the west, toward the “Big T”--Upper Big Tujunga Road-- where a volunteer recently spotted black smoke.

As he began to relate that story, of a car fire, George Morey kept his eyes on the horizon, scanning the forest. Just in case.