GUARDIANS AGAINST FOREST FIRES
Lookouts man towers in forest, sometimes spending lonely summer hours watching for ‘smokes’ day after day
FJEMEZ MOUNTAINS rom the top of the 1960s-era lookout station, Ron Gallegos points out the scars of fires past. To the north and east are reminders of the Las Conchas and Cerro Grande fires, two of the largest and most destructive in New Mexico history. To the southwest is the bosque of Sandia Pueblo, and even farther in the distance, Mount Taylor near Grants. He’s seen smoke from those places, too. And up close, only 50 feet from this steel-and-cinder block tower are the wounds from a mid-’90s fire that crawled right up to the base of the structure. The old-school outpost at Cerro Pelado — one of the most vital firefighting facilities in
Northern New Mexico — has seen it all.
Deep in the woods, and yet high above it all, the lookout station and the people who work in it are the first responders’ first responders. For all the technological advances firefighting has seen through the years, there are times when nothing beats a watchful eye looking for the slightest wisp of smoke.
“The lookout is a very important position,” says Gallegos, a fire prevention officer. “… I think it’s one of the most important resources that we have.”
The Santa Fe National Forest has four lookout stations manned by U.S. Forest Service staff from about mid-April to mid-August each year. Those who staff the facility 24/7 call in weather reports and act as eyes in the sky for firefighting crews, helping them target fires as they arise, then watching their backs if conditions change.
“It’s a very responsible position,” says Barbara Zinn, who has staffed lookout stations in different states for the last 31 seasons. “A lot of people don’t have that impression about lookouts, but we have a pretty serious job to do — especially in a year like this.”
For live-in forest lookouts, the job requires diligent commitment. They check in early and call in the weather twice daily — once in the morning, once in the afternoon — to alert colleagues on winds, temperature and humidity, all critical factors in forest fires.
Throughout the day, they use their eyes and binoculars to constantly check for “smokes.” If they spot smoke, the technicians use a “fire finder” tool — essentially a compass overlayed on top of a map, to get a bearing on the fire.
Sam Allen, working as a firstyear lookout at Cerro Pelado, says he scans the horizon multiple times an hour. Even when he’s doing something else, he’s “always thinking about where there could be a fire.”
If he spots one, like a small blaze that Allen saw burning on a mesa last week, he has to try and pinpoint the location. It’s a tricky job. Many of the mesas look the same, and calculating the distance to a fire requires maps and knowing landmarks. Getting it right is difficult, “unless you’ve been here for a long time, and I still don’t get it just right,” says Gallegos, who has worked as a relief for lookouts at the Cerro Pelado tower over the past 14 years and is training Allen on his new job.
Ideally, firefighters can respond and put out a fire before it becomes an issue. A lightning-caused fire that burned on Peggy Mesa in the Jemez Mountains last week, for example, was put out before it could burn 5 acres.
As fires grow, Allen can keep an eye on their behavior by reading the volume, color and character of the smoke. Small fires typically burn white, but as they grow bigger and hotter, they turn slightly blue. They turn gray and black as they start to torch trees and bigger timber. A smoldering fire will blanket an area with smoke, Allen explained, instead of billowing up.
Zinn says the most important part of her job is looking out for the firefighters in the forest around her.
From the lookout, she can keep an eye on approaching weather and alert firefighters to issues like lightning that can be a severe risk for them. She also watches precipitation, wind direction and fire behavior, and helps with radio communications.
“A lot of folks think that our main job is fire detection, looking for the smokes and reporting them and so forth. That’s certainly a big part of our job. But I feel that our main job is firefighter and public safety,” she says. “In this era of extreme fire behavior and catastrophic fires, it’s really important to keep a watch on the firefighters who are out there in the woods, and I have kind of a big view.”
It can be a big view with nothing to see. There can be months, Zinn says, when nothing really happens.
“People who are extroverts who need a lot of communication with other folks and a lot of being with other people, they’re going to go nuts up here,” Zinn says. “You have to have something that keeps your attention.”
Many of her lookout friends, for example, are artists and writers and musicians and naturalists — people who can keep themselves busy during the solitary hours in the forest.
Zinn, who has worked in the Santa Fe National Forest for the past six years, spent her last four years compiling a history of the forests lookouts. Her research points to a decline in the number of lookouts around the forest. In 1986, for example, there were eight staffed lookout towers, but today there are only four.
Over the years, some towers fell into disrepair. Others became too expensive to run, as fire costs started to escalate. And new technologies have started taking over for the analog lookouts since the middle of the 20th century, when the forest service started using reconnaissance planes, Zinn says.
Currently, the national forest is using reconnaissance planes, in tandem with the four lookouts, to check for fires.
Zinn sees it as a symbiotic relationship. The planes can check in the spots she can’t see from her perch, such as in canyons. But, while the planes only fly for a few hours, lookouts are there all the time and can spot things long after the planes are gone.
“A lot people think that we should de be replaced by technology, by cameras and so forth,” Zinn says. “The human eye, the human brain, the judgment that we have, I don’t think can really be replaced by technology.”
Anna Bouchonville, a spokeswoman for the Santa Fe National Forest, says the forest plans to continue maintaining and staffing the four lookout towers.
That’s good news in Zinn’s book. After 31 seasons, she still loves those four months of the year that she spends surrounded by open sky.
“It’s kind of a job you either love or you hate. Frankly, I think most people would hate it after about the first hour,” Zinn says. “If it suits your personality type, it’s just the greatest thing.”