Threat of dry lightning puts Marin County volunteer fire lookouts on high alert
SAN RAFAEL (KPIX) -- Fire agencies were on high alert Monday with forecasts of possible "dry lightning." In Marin County, that means a team of volunteer fire lookouts could be the difference between an unusual weather event and disaster.
From Mount Diablo in the distance, to Point Reyes station to the west, Michael Fischer feels a sense of ownership of the land stretching out beneath him.
"It's actually panned out to be just what I was hoping for," he said, climbing the stairs to his post. "It's a place where not only are you alone and not only are you looking at beautiful stuff, but you've got a job to do, too."
As a volunteer lookout for the Marin Fire Department, Fischer takes his job seriously. That's why it was gratifying last year when he spotted a tiny plume of smoke in the White's Hill Pass area and called it in.
"Within moments of me saying 'white smoke is at White's Hill Pass,' they said, 'Got it!' and then I heard all sorts of sirens. I spotted it at a third of an acre, and they stopped it at three acres," Fischer said. "There was wind from the east that day and it would have gone just over the ridge and down into Woodacre, and from Woodacre, who knows? It's right next to the watershed."
His lookout post on the top of Mount Barnabe has a panoramic view of the watershed, and that's important because a large wildfire in that area has the potential to contaminate the entire drinking water supply for most of Marin's residents. Lookouts coordinator, Brett Hughes, said humans make better sentinels than the smoke cameras that many other jurisdictions rely on.
"Having human eyes gives us a better idea of where the fire is," said Hughes. "A lot of views from the camera don't give us a great perspective of how to locate the fire."
Once a fire is spotted, Fischer uses an antique navigation device called an alidade to plot its location. They can then triangulate from another lookout on Mt. Tamalpais, and zero in on the fire's exact location, saving vital response time.
Fischer normally works from 11 am to sunset, but on Monday, with the prospect of lightning, he arrived two hours early. Five years of catastrophic wildfires have shown him what could happen, and that is what keeps him vigilant. It's also what makes the job so gratifying.
"And at the end of the day, my wife will tell you, I'm just whipped, because you're alert the whole time," he said. "Five years in and haven't gotten bored yet."
Nationally, the number of manned lookouts has dwindled as departments rely on prepositioned wildfire cameras but Marin County maintains a team of about 50 volunteer lookouts operating from its two mountaintop posts.
