Keeping an Eye Out on the Forest : Region’s Fire Lookouts See End of an Era on the Horizon

Tom Fusek is one of a dying breed.

From his perch 8,013 feet above sea level--a tower near the border between Kern and Ventura counties--Fusek keeps watch over the rugged ridges of Los Padres National Forest, scanning the horizon every few minutes, ready to radio firefighters at the first puffs of smoke.

On a clear day, Fusek’s 360-degree view includes the Sierra Nevada foothills, Bakersfield, Palmdale, the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles and even Santa Catalina Island. He said he once saw ships rounding San Pedro--more than 85 miles away.

But this summer could be Fusek’s last season as a professional fire lookout.

Although still widely used in remote parts of Northern California, the lookouts have become an endangered species in the state and national forests of Southern California, phased out by budget cuts, technology, urban sprawl and smog.

“They’re getting few and far between,” Don Trammell, district recreation officer at Los Padres, said.

Once the backbone of the U.S. Forest Service’s firefighting network from Kern to the Mexican border, lookout towers have been on the decline for more than 20 years. The last towers in Angeles National Forest, which covers more than 600,000 acres of Los Angeles County, were closed about eight years ago.

Lookouts watch over the four counties encompassed by Los Padres from only three of the area’s seven remaining towers--Fusek’s 54-year-old wooden tower at Frazier Mountain and two others near Big Sur.

The Cleveland National Forest in San Diego County still operates two of its seven towers and the San Bernardino National Forest keeps three towers open using volunteers. A fourth tower in San Bernardino was reopened a few weeks ago--with a paid lookout--to stand guard over the forest during the hot, dry days of September.

Of 65 lookout towers operated by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, none are in the 11 southernmost counties.

“The wild lands are getting crowded,” Karen Terrill, a department spokeswoman, said. “And when you’ve got a subdivision next door, there’s really no need for a lookout.”

Many fires are spotted by commercial and private pilots, forest officials said. In recent years, motorists have begun reporting fires by car phone.

It costs up to $10,000 each year to operate the Frazier Mountain tower, and forest officials said financial considerations may force them to close the lookout after this fire season.

Fusek admitted that, on some occasions, he has sounded alarms only to be told some camper or pilot reported the flames first. Even so, the Frazier Mountain tower and its commanding view can still mean the difference between a small fire and devastating blaze, Jim Smith, a fire management officer in Los Padres, said.

For Fusek, the tower is a serene retreat from city life. Fusek, a tall and lanky native of North Hollywood who grew sick of traffic, smog and urban blight, turned his back on the city after graduating from Cal State Los Angeles with a bachelor’s degree in geography in 1975.

He worked as a welder, a laborer and a fire lookout in Sequoia National Forest before coming to Frazier Mountain in 1985. He lives in the tower’s 8-foot-by-8-foot room five days a week, on watch from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., before returning for two days of rest at his house in Santa Barbara.

“I’m at peace with the world when coming down after five days,” he said. “I feel more lonely in the big city. There’s a difference between loneliness and solitude.”

But solitude is not for everyone.

Smith said forest personnel still chuckle about a lookout who, perhaps unable to handle the boredom of duty, got drunk many years ago and randomly fired a gun all over Frazier Mountain. The lookout radioed his superiors to report that someone was shooting at him.

At Frazier Mountain, the solitude is broken occasionally by a stray hunter or hiker. The hunters, Fusek said wearily, always ask the same questions: Have you seen any deer? Where are the deer? Have you seen any bucks?

Yes, he tells them. And that’s part of the mountain’s appeal. There are deer, coyotes, birds and, always, that inspiring view.

The site, about seven miles west of Gorman, has been a fire lookout since 1905. The tower, a boxy wooden structure with peeling Army green paint, was built in 1936 at Camuesa Peak in Santa Barbara County and then relocated after a forest fire destroyed the Frazier Mountain tower in 1952.

It’s equipped with a small bunk, a television set, a stove, and a contraption called the Osborne fire finder, which Fusek uses to plot the exact coordinates of a fire. Taped to the side of the fire finder is a Far Side cartoon of a lookout, burned to a crisp, surrounded by untouched forest.

Tucked behind the bunk is a small insulated stool Fusek stands on during electrical storms for protection. The closest lightning strike he ever saw hit a nearby electrical transformer.

Fusek is supposed to scan the mountains every 15 minutes. But in reality he is always on guard, and while chatting with visitors recently, he now and then shifted his eyes to the horizon.

The worst blaze in Fusek’s career at Frazier Mountain was the Fishbowls fire of 1987, named for a campground several miles to the south. It was 11:50 a.m., Fusek said, when he casually glanced up and saw a blue-black plume.

After reporting the fire, all Fusek could do was watch as 5,000 acres were charred. “It’s kind of a helpless feeling for me,” he said.

There’s more to being a lookout than just watching the horizon, he said. Lookouts must recognize the slight gradations of color and movement which distinguish a fire from dust devils or steam rising from a wet road warmed by the sun.

During a recent visit, Smith reminded Fusek of smoke he reported seeing several days earlier. A helicopter flew over the site and the spotter decided it was only steam.

But two days later, a fire broke out in the exact spot, Smith said. The blaze had been smoldering. Fusek had been right after all. He nodded slightly with satisfaction.

Fusek admitted later that he has mixed feelings about reporting fires. “To prove yourself, you want to see a smoke,” he said. “But you don’t want to see a big smoke.”