Footnotes to a fire: an interview

What makes lookouts valuable?

Let me answer that with a question. How many people in the Campfire did not need to die had the lookout over the town, Sawmill Peak, been manned? To add insult to injury, the camera on the lookout did immediately pick up the fire, but the alarm had been turned off. Cameras cannot do what a human being can.

Why was the lookout not staffed?

Russian Roulette, the Forest Service and CDF are playing Russian Roulette. In order so save money and buy a plane costing millions to  run, the state closed it’s whole lookout system in 2003, more than 60 lookouts were abandoned. The forest where the campfire started closed all its remaining lookouts for the season  the week before. They used to have 26. They now have 6.

Do you have any other examples?

Yes, the Angora Fire at Lake Tahoe burned ninety houses and almost the high school. The fire was first reported as a control burn. A mile from the fire is a lookout, Angora Lookout. I served on it in 1980. It had been decommissioned, as had the other two lookouts around the lake, Zeper Cove and Stateline,  on both of which I also served. No, it was not a control burn, and a lookout on  Angora would have told them so immediately. I don’t know how long the response was delayed, but long enough.

And how is the lookout situation?

As I’ve said, we’re down to 6 from 26. And though I’d been payed to watch on my lunch break for 35 years, the forest administration decided last summer to save a few pennies at the lookout’s expense. Last July they closed the lookouts in the afternoon when the wind and heat come up. Four times I came back from lunch to  find the helicopter looking for fires. Two turned out to be genuine flames, two were false alarms. One of those false launches cost them more money, I suspect, than what they saved on lookouts’ lunches for the rest of the season.

What do you actually do when you see a fire?

I call dispatch and say, SMOKE REPORT. Then I do my best to pinpoint the location and tell what color the smoke is and how fast it’s increasing, and most importantly is  wind pushing the flames. Then I report any changes as the crews are launched. This is extremely important. Even if the fire reported locally it’s up to me to keep tabs on it and issue any warnings. This is where Sawmill Peak Lookout could have warned everyone to get out. As it was there were no alarms. People found out by happenstance.

What do you think should be done?

All the lookouts in California need to be restaffed and new ones built. Early detection saves homes and lives. Many, many reports come in with false locations,  maybe ten miles away, or in absolutely the wrong direction. This is why fires reported need to be confirmed from above, even if the lookouts don’t pick it up first. Also,  using volunteers instead of a paid professional   is a form of playing Russian Roulette. No part-timer can substitute for a long-term lookout who has watched the same territory for ten, twenty, even fifty years and who can detect something out of place immediately.

Is this an expensive proposition?

Not compared to buying more and more aircraft and installing cameras which can be extremely pricey. I am all for more air-tankers, small ones that can fly low into the canyons. No more DC-10’s which can work only on ridge tops and valley. The DC-10 the state has, in my opinion,  is only for show, to impress people and the news. It costs an amazing amount to run.

Where else do you think money should be spent?

That’s easy, PREVENTION. I know the Forest Service spending less and less on it. It brings no glory and no big money. Every fighter becomes a hero when there’s a huge and dangerous fire. They deserve to be considered so. What’s forgotten is they’ve put out dozens of fires during the season no one ever hears about. Yes, unless it burns up whole mountain-sides and gets on the news, nobody pays attention to the real needs of prevention.

What was your actual experience of the Campfire?

It was a very bizarre one! I was two thousand miles away. As I said, I was laid off the week before. I immediately took the train to Berkeley, then hopped a plane from Oakland to Mexico City. I’d planned to spend a month, though my first impression of the city in the rain made me want to turn around. Unfortunately, I couldn’t cancel any of my reservation at the hostel, since I’d booked it through an agency. Okay, I thought, look at the room, give it a try.  I found a lower, corner bed where I could kind of hide from the other 15 beds in the room. I’d come for art and museums, since Mexico City has more than any other city in the world (except maybe Paris). I’d just snuggled in when I got my first email about the Campfire. I coulndn’t believe it, but I was able to get the news on my phone and follow the events. I felt terrible, like I’d committed a derelection of duty. Friends wrote about the smoke in Chico, twenty miles away, my home. How it blocked out the sun and created a nuclear winter, grass on the ground freezing. It burned toward Chico and they turned it aside burning toward Biggs, reaching highway ninety-nine. A friend wrote about walking his dog, hardly able to breathe. He volunteered at a shelter, where people vomited into the aisles, contaminated by a special virus which made the round of the camps. WHAT WAS I TO DO? I bought an extra ticket back. People convinced me not to come back until my month was up. I let the extra ticket lapse, throwing away $240. Needless to say, I kept connected as the news poured in. 50,000 homeless, Chico flooded with refugees, the parking lots full of tents, people going further afield to find places. At first the estimate of the dead was over a thousand. Gradually the number came down as people were contacted. The final dead just less than a hundred. Ironically, I felt I’d lived through the whole thing myself, only in a very dream-like way. When I did get back, most of the action over. The parking lots empty. No smoke in the air. The only Chico evidence of what had happened a doubling of the traffic on the streets. All in all, it was for me a surreal experience, mixed with Aztec masks and sacrificial alters.


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https://youtu.be/5ERFiFS-eGE