Some Commonly Asked Questions About Fire Lookouts

Thinking about visiting a lookout? Here are some things to keep in mind...

Hey! I thought all lookout towers were made obsolete by airplanes. Why are there still over 90 staffed lookouts in Oregon alone?! Oh, I'm so glad you asked that question as it is one of my favorites. The answer is a long one so click here to get the answer and a little education in lookout politics to boot! Are all fire towers open for the public to visit? No, but most are. click here for more information on this topic What kind of schedule/hours does a lookout staffer keep on a daily/weekly/monthly basis? Most lookouts work a normal five-days-on two-off schedule. They will usually leave their towers on the days off and a "relief" staffer will pull a shift for these two days. Lookouts keep fairly normal daylight working hours(9to6 is typical) and will often work 1-3 hours overtime on days of extreme fire weather or activity. There is some validity to the claim that during a full moon many lookouts will pull many hours of overtime howling at the moon Some lookouts are done on a contract basis. The lowest bidder for the contract is responsible for staffing the lookout seven days a week and many of the contract lookouts I know will choose not to hire "reliefs" when they want a break, but will work straight through the entire summer and only come down occasionally for groceries and a real shower. These people are the true die-hards of the lookout community and some of my personal heroes. Most lookouts in Eastern/Central Oregon are staffed from approx. June 20 to October 15 with some going longer. Most lookouts in Western Oregon are staffed July 1 to Oct.1 . Most lookouts would love to remain on their perches throughout the winter months ala Jack Nicholson in "the Shining" but the government doesn't permit it. At the end of the season most lookout buildings are boarded up, stripped of their valuables(basically anything vandals might like to take)and left to weather out the winter. What happens if the lookout tower gets hit by lightning? Lookout towers do occasionally get hit by lightning and a handful seem to get hit several times a season. The lookout tower itself is usually rigged with four or five lightning rods on the roof which are in turn grounded via long copper wires so ideally any lightning bolts will be channeled away from the lookout and into the ground. This is not always the case however as I do occasionally hear stories of lightning finding its way down stove pipes or electrical wiring and into the cab of the lookout. I guess you just hope your sorry butt isn't due for some bad karma if this happens. Lookouts are very rarely killed by lightning and when they are it's usually because they were standing outside of the lookout on the catwalk when the lightning struck. All lookout towers also have a small wooden stool with glass-insulated legs that the lookout staffer can stand on during lightning storms although I've heard a rumor that this actually does very little good and that as long as the cab itself is made of wood(some are made of steel) the staffer is just as safe standing on the floor...right??... What happens if there is a fire at night? Doesn't the staffer have to stay awake looking for fires 24 hours a day?! Nearly all lightning storms in Oregon occur in the afternoon and this is therefore the time when nearly all forest fires become active. Occasionally a storm will materialize at night and if the storm brings a legitimate fire threat(if it isn't accompanied by buckets of rain or if the fire fuels are extremely dry) lookouts will often put off bedtime and report fires into the twilight hours. Humidities are often so high at night and thunderstorms so rare that nightime fire spotting vigils are uncommon. Most lookouts do stay the night in the tower however. So How is a fire spotted/reported? Fires are spotted the old fashioned way; A pair of binoculars and alert eyes are the only tool. Once spotted the lookout staffer will get an azimuth to the fire using a firefinder which is really a simple instrument to operate and gives a very precise compass reading to the fire. Once the azimuth is obtained the lookout will reference a large map with topographical lines. His or lookout station is located on this map and has a compass ring pasted over it(this is a small transparent stick-on circle that is gradated around its edges at 1 degree intervals for 360 degrees) Yep, 360 degrees, just like a compass. This compass ring is pasted on the map so the lookout is directly in the center of it and is aligned so that the "0" degree mark is due north, the 180 degree mark due south etc.(just as it is aligned on the firefinder or any compass) So, to summarize,the lookout on the map sits squarely in the middle of a circle with all the compass points marked off all around it. The next step then is to draw a straight line (or run a string) from the lookout and across the number on the compass ring that was obtained from the fire finder. The drawn line(or string) then gives the lookout a visual on the map of the "line of sight" from the lookout that the fire is located under. The lookout knows the fire is located somewhere under that line-it's just a question of how far out it is. 12 miles? 15 miles? By referencing between the topographical details on the map to the actual seen topography the staffer can then get a pretty good fix on exactly where the fire is located. This has its limitations however as fires are often behind large ridges and it is often necessary to take a guess as to distance. The fire location is recorded as a "legal" (Township, Range, section, quarter/quarter section-ie to 400 meters) and then reported to a dispatch center(usually a federal forest agency) along with info about the fire size, behaviour, potential, fuel type, wind conditions etc. The dispatch center then determines which resources should be assigned to the given fire. Most always a wildland fire engine or two is all that is needed, but if the fire has serious potential airpatrols, helicopters, fire crews and retardant planes will be sent. Was that confusing? Hopefully I'll have an illustrated description sometime in the future! Do many women staff fire lookouts? In the days of old it was rare to find a woman lookout. Nowadays it seems that somewhere aroung half of all towers are staffed by women. How do you get your Electricity/Water? Most lookouts nowadays have solar panels which are used to charge 12-volt batteries. This usually provides enough electricity to run lights, cbs, a small television, radios etc. How do you cook?In Oregon nearly all lookouts have propane cooking stoves. How about refrigeration? Nearly all LOs have small propane refrigerators/freezers. How about heat?Most Oregon LOs now use propane heaters although a fair number still use wood stoves. I've never known a lookout to have an air-conditioner. How do you shower?! I've seen alot of those portable solar-heated camping showers. Some have elaborate setups involving sun-heated tanks and shower heads but a pan of warm water and a washcloth works just fine for most lookouts. Still others don't shower and if you visit you will become quite aware of this fact. How many fires will a lookout typically report in a season? This largely depends on the lookout tower. Number of fires reported is the source of great pride amongst lookouts and I've heard many a good exaggerration so it's difficult to get an accurate measure of such things. Some lookout towers simply offer better views than others and some lookout staffers simply have better eyes than others. I can't speak for other regions, but where I work in Eastern/Central Oregon I believe a typical lookout in an average season will log 14-24 initial reports (An initial report as I'm defining it is a fire that 1)the reporting lookout had the FIRST report on--before any other lookout, airplane, or citizen. 2)is a legitimate statistical fire(ie. prescribed field burns, legal campfires etc. do NOT count--Many lookouts do count these because when budgets are determined the number of responses a fire engine makes, regardless of whether the fire was legal or not, are taken into consideration) A good number of the lookouts will average 25-45 and a small handful of lookouts average 45-70 and in a high fire frequency season will sometimes report over 100 fires!! If you use the alternative counting method, counting every fire the lookout had first report on regardless of whether it was a "legal" smoke or not, the aforementioned numbers go up close to two-fold in some areas. How small of a fire can a lookout see? How large do they typically grow to be? A fire the size of a campfire is fairly difficult to see from a lookout unless it is nearby(5 miles or less)-usually the smoke from a typical campfire will remain close to the ground and by the time it breaks the forest canopy(if it does at all) is usually too dispersed to easily spot from a lookout. Most ground fires(i.e. they have not climbed up into any trees or canopy cover) reported from lookout towers are the size of 5-10 small campfires combined(a 15'by15' foot spot on the ground in light fuels would be typical). Oftentimes lightning will set a single tree(or just the top of a tree) on fire and these fires are also easily seen from a lookout. If visibility is good and the light is right a lookout can pick off small fires(single snag burning) at 35 miles or more. A 20 mile radius of detection is common, depending on terrain. In Central Oregon where I work I'd guess that about 90%of all fires are extinguished when they are smaller than 1/4 acre in size. About 5% become "problem children". what happens if a forest fire starts near the lookout? Occasionally(I know of it occuring 5 times(twice to one lookout) in the last 5 years in Eastern Oregon) fire lookouts have had to be evacuated. Usually the staffer has enough advanced warning to make their getaway by vehicle. No towers that I'm aware of in Oregon have been destroyed by fire as of recent but one did recently lose his outhouse in a large fire. Helicopter evacuations are very rare but have taken place Don't lookouts get bored and lonely?! This may seem a bit of an odd question, but I can't count the number of times I hear it asked. Most people who staff fire lookouts do it because they love the the solitude the outdoors offers and they find lightning storms and fire reporting to be anything but boring. Nevertheless, many people who sit atop fire lookouts do get lonely and bored out of their skulls and they usually don't stick with it for more than a year or two. I've spent my summers on fire lookouts for 13 years now and I'm a rookie by many standards: One lookout in the Deschuttes N.F. is going on 30 years and another is over 40. A BLM lookout to my East has sat utop his perch for over 25 years. I could go on... These people do not find the job to be boring or lonely! How did you get this job?The answers to this question are as diverse as the lookouts themselves. Many lookouts were once firefighters themselves and have realized that living on a lookout tower is a million times more rewarding than firefighting(I personally know several hundred firefighters who would vociferously contest that claim), but just for the record, it is more rewarding. Others just accidently fell into it- right place, right time kind of thing. If you visit a lookout go ahead and ask this question-you might get some interesting stories. They don't pay you to do this do they, you lazy bum,... just sit up in this tower all day and pick your nose? Although I've known my fair share of lookouts who do pick their noses all day(other lookouts in their area usually call in fires under those very same noses!) most lookouts do work for their money. The irony of being a fire lookout is that despite the fact you are all alone in the middle of nowhere with no supervisor, it is a job in which your performance is constantly being tested and held up in broad daylight for all your coworkers to see every time you report(or FAIL to report as the case may be...)a fire. It is not at all easy to spot a small fire burning some 15 miles away in some featureless blip of a draw and with really nothing more to go on than a compass bearing and a topo map give the fire units a legal within the expected quarter/quarter section. Sounds easy, but it's not. It takes lots of practice and learning of your seen area to do it well and if you don't you're going to be embarassed when the fire ends up being 3 miles to the South of where you said it was and because you were so far off the responding unit is delayed in getting to the fire by five minutes and in that five minutes the fire grows from 1/8 of an acre to 5 acres and then, because it wasn't caught when it was still small (all your fault you wacky lookout) it blows up in the matter of an afternoon and destroys 10,000 acres of prime nesting land for the endangered seven-toed skunk and then races towards the local community where it proceeds to torch the one-room school house, church, , the museum and Mrs. Winkle's prized petunia patch!!!! The point here is that it is a job and like all other jobs(except for members of congress of course) it comes with its pressures and responsibilities and demands one to remain alert, engage the brain, and retain a sense of humor. It also takes practice, practice, practice. The best lookouts are those that have done it for years and know their seen area like the backs of their hands. Initial attacking forest fires is a profession in which the difference between holding a fire under an acre and losing it to a 100 acre dragon is oftenimes a matter of seconds(no exagerration here) and good lookout can make a big difference. Okay then, how much do they pay you to do this job then? Somewhat of a nosey question my friend. I'll put it this way: If you hope to own a new Mini-van, wear Eddie Bauer clothes, buy that rocket launcher you saw for sale on the internet auction site and, in general, live the American Dream you can forget about being a lookout. We typically make 7-10 dollars an hour and some of the contract lookouts do it for even less. Some people do it for free. It's just one of those jobs you gotta love 'cause the money certainly ain't the draw! Fortunately, there is much to love about the job. "Have you seen any Deer/Elk around?"Don't ask this question of a fire lookout. Just don't. They hear it all the time and most find it an annoying and trite question. Do I need to tell you not to ask this question again?

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