The Wooden Nutmeg

Photo essay from the Wood River Valley area: http://d90.us/wooden_nutmeg/essays/Arcadia_2010/

A really great write up of managing fire in New England Pine Barrens, archive here.

In addition to those “natural community” issues, few active firefighters have seen truly severe fire conditions in New England.

Although rainfall alone doesn’t dictate fire danger (frequency of rain is likely much more important in New England in keeping fire danger to “high” or below), the following graphs show a very sharp difference between pre-1970 and post-1970 climate. You can get more data for different regions of the New England states here.

I strongly suspect that it is not coincidence that we haven’t had a serious forest fire problem in southern New England since the early 1960s. Before, roughly, 1970 we used to experience a deep drought about every ten years. Nothing since 1970 has matched those 10 year droughts.

Also I’m still researching the frequency rain events. Rain tends to “reset” the fire danger.

Let’s assume a cycle like this; while conjecture it’s not an unreasonable cycle based on my observations over the years:
Day 1: Rain (Low danger)
Day 2: Moderate
Day 3: High
Day 4: High
Day 5: High
Day 6: High
Day 7: Very High
Day 8: Very High
Day 9: Very High
Day 10: Rain (Low)

Now add in one overnight rain:
Day 1: Rain (Low danger)
Day 2: Moderate
Day 3: High
Day 4: High
Day 5: Rain overnight (moderate)
Day 6: Moderate
Day 7: High
Day 8: High
Day 9: High
Day 10: Rain (Low)

Most people wouldn’t notice a major impact from an extra shower or two in April, but it could be having a very large impact on fire danger.

Slowly rotting away. The metal looks in good shape, not sure I’d trust the wood anymore!

Rhode Island stopped routinely staffing their fire towers around 1990, although some are occasionally staffed by the DEM on the worse fire danger days. Esocheag seems to get no love. This tower was erected in 1938, is 80′ high, and sits at 560′ above sea level. Photos from 2004 and 1990 can be found here. (In those pictures you’ll see a “candy cane” radio tower, that is no longer there. There is a newer tower which is un-painted and I believe shorter. It may have been erected a little further south then the radio tower in the older pictures, too.)

This tower would’ve looked down at a 30,000 acre fire a few miles to it’s north in 1942, and nine years later it would witness an 8,000 acre fire burning just to it’s south.

I do have mixed feelings on fire towers. From a romantic standpoint, I think they’re cool. From an economic standpoint, you would have to have some sharp pencils to show me that they are cost effective. There are some volunteer staffing programs around the nation (see this post), and it makes me wonder if you compromised with the State maintaining the towers and retired (but in good health) volunteers manning them the few critical weeks each year if it would be a reasonable compromise.

When Connecticut discontinued their fire towers in the 1980s they removed them, so at least we don’t have pathetic sights like watching Esocheag rot away. Massachusetts still staffs a number of their towers, with more in a “reserve” status that sees them manned occasionally. When listening to a fire in Dudley last week when the Charlton tower was closed due to lack of staff, the Patrolman from Douglas State Forest went up the Oxford tower to get a third, more accurate line since the towers in Princeton and Mendon were having difficulty pinpointing it and determining if it was a single and not multiple fires.

Following up on this earlier post.

Bottom line:
15 full-time Patrolmen where given layoff notices.
6 were saved for the year by funding the Federal Stimulus funds.
7 “bumped” themselves into other DCR positions (laying off junior employees in those positions).
2 were laid off.

They have a seasonal force of 54.

This is down from the early 1980s when they had, in addition to 16 Patrolmen, 53 fulltime firefighters who worked both on apparatus and towers as needed, plus 104 seasonal firefighters.

Interesting reply from this T&G Article:

Its 13 fire districts for 13 Wardens and one Chief.In those 13 fire districts they had a total of 16 fire patrolman positions to cover the whole state of Massachusetts.

Only 6 Patrolman positions was saved, 4 in the Southeast down the cape region,1-North Middlesex and 1-Hampshire County on federal grant programs for a year or two .

So actually they lost 10 fire patrolman positions not funded anymore and never could fill the 53-fulltime fire truck & tower positions that was never filled thru the many years when they became vacant from retirement,they just kept on cutting positions of about 53 fulltime fire positions gone already since the 80′s..

They also had back then 104 fire seasonal employees to man all 52 towers to fill in on days off & assisting the engine operators fighting fires ,each district had at least one fulltime tower man so in case the fire tower was needed in the late fall or winter dry season the tower position would be manned.Remember the seasonal tower positions are only staff from April to October,.That leaves out the months of November, December, January, February, March if there is no snow cover and have a dry period of no snow,warm temps,low humidity you could still have fire breaking out and it has happen before past fire history.

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And the main article:

By Brian Lee TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
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Recent significant brush fires after record rainfalls have surprised some people, a state official said.

But all the ingredients, including the aftereffects of the December 2008 ice storm, are in place for such fires, said David Celino, the state’s chief forest fire warden in the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.

“It does take the public by surprise, especially when we have open burning through May 1,” Mr. Celino said. “People, coming off the rains with historical flooding, look at the idea of having a fire threat as not there, when in fact it’s easy to get escape fires with this kind of a weather pattern.”

Among the incidents was last week’s 350-acre brushfire on Tekoa Mountain in the western Massachusetts town of Russell. State officials put together a 20-person crew out of the DCR to contain it within two days, Mr. Celino said.

In Central Massachusetts, there was an estimated 55-acre brush fire in Dudley Tuesday. It was in a heavily wooded area between Hayden Pond and Corbin and Baker Pond roads near the Charlton and Oxford lines.

It took about six hours and firefighters from six surrounding towns and the DCR to extinguish the fire, according to Dudley Fire Capt. David J. Konieczny, whose department walked the area Wednesday to make sure it was completely out.

Earlier this month there was a six-acre brush fire on the south scenic face of Mount Pisgah Conservation Area Trail in Northboro.

According to Mr. Celino, in many cases the ice storm increased the volume of tree limbs and branches on the ground, particularly in central and northern Worcester County, into Hampshire and Franklin counties and central and northern Berkshire County at elevations higher than 1,000 feet.

A year later the fuels on the ground have cured in the affected areas, creating the problem, he said.

After a year of curing, and with the recent rains, the area has seen fine fuels such as leaf litter, sticks and twigs become main carriers for some fires, he said.

The rainfalls were followed by dry air from the Arctic region. The low humidity and dew points can essentially dry out in less than a day the light surface fuels, Mr. Celino said.

Add to it southerly warm and dry winds and it makes for high fire danger, he said.

Capt. Konieczny of Dudley said he was impressed that the fire was first seen from a DCR fire observation tower in Princeton, quite a distance from a tower in Charlton that was not staffed at the time.

Mr. Celino said there was good visibility that day.

“The Dudley fire was a great example of how we were able to make the best of what we have,” he said. “The towers were able to locate that fire and then we were able to put state resources on the fire to help get containment.”

However, staffing levels in the towers concern Northboro Fire Chief David M. Durgin, who said he believed it played a factor in the Mount Pisgah fire. He said fire towers in Princeton and Sudbury were not staffed at the time, so they couldn’t see it.

“That’s why the fire ended up being as large as it was, six acres, and no early notification,” he said.

In October, Chief Durgin wrote his local legislators stating his concern about potential DCR staffing levels as a result of budget cuts.

“It’s a case where the state is saving money, but the cities and towns, even if someone had been put in those two towers on overtime that day, it would have been cheaper than the ultimate costs of the number of towns I had to bring in mutual aid to extinguish that fire,” he said.

Mr. Celino said the tower program is his agency’s top priority.

“We know that it’s valuable to the fire service, getting early detection, and so even though we did go through part of a staff reduction plan, we realized that the tower program is a priority,” he said.

Its seasonal roster reflected that concern, as seasonal workers were brought in earlier than usual this year, he said.

There are more than 40 fire towers statewide. Most are staffed by seasonal workers, Mr. Celino said. The agency is employing 54 seasonal workers throughout the state through the first week of October.

During high fire danger days the state can staff about 22 towers, depending on what the shifts are, he said.

“If we can get anywhere from 17 to 22 of those towers up, and those are our key towers, they provide us pretty good coverage across the state,” Mr. Celino said.

The DCR has 13 district fire wardens and six patrolmen who work with towns during fire season, as well as with the seasonal workers, he said.

Last October, 15 patrolmen received layoff notices but only two were laid off. Six jobs were saved with federal stimulus money, and seven went elsewhere in the agency through bargaining rights, Mr. Celino said.

State Sen. Stephen M. Brewer, D-Barre, said his office has been in touch with the state office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and the DCR. They were told that the federal stimulus money that was allotted at the beginning of this season will last for two seasons to keep the towers manned.

“The challenge for the forest fire issue is what happens when the federal stimulus money goes away?” the senator said, adding he hoped that things would get better as the economy improves.

Because some forest fires along the Route 2 corridor are caused by train sparks, he said he would be “more than happy to go after the railroads” for liability.

“If Joe Six-Pack threw a cigarette they’d be going after him, that’s for sure,” Mr. Brewer said.

Patricia A. Correia, fire warden in northern Worcester County, was at a three-acre brush fire Wednesday at Bearsden Conservation Area in Athol. She said its cause was most likely the railroad that runs through the conservation area.

From this 2009 application for federal economic stimulus funds:

Connecticut‟s State Parks and Forest road infrastructure is amass in deferred maintenance. A 2006 State forest road inventory estimated 305,403 tons of gravel and 37,255 tons of stone were needed to correct existing non-point source pollution concerns. In addition, a March 2008 CT DEP Engineering Unit sufficiency study rated 61% of State parks and forest bridges in either a fair or poor category. The number of forest access roads closed for public safety and environmental concerns continues to rise creating increased logistical difficulties for wildfire suppression and emergency ambulatory response. The Connecticut State Park & Forest Road Rehabilitation Project will significantly reduce non-point source pollution risk and improve watershed ecosystem function by bringing substandard road-stream crossings up to current Army
Corp of Engineer performance standards. Rehabilitated roads will allow for increased forest management thus improved forest health and protection. Timber constructed bridges will utilize renewable construction material contributing to additional indirect forest products industry jobs.

I found some interesting statements, below, in the 2005, “Rhode Island Forest Resources Management Plan,” archived here.

On changes to the forest:

As previously stated, forest cover in Rhode Island increased starting in the early 1800’s as abandoned farms reverted to forest. Continued farm abandonment, repeated clearing of forests for fuel, as well as forest fires kept a variety of age classes dispersed through Rhode Island’s landscape through the 1950’s. Since then, Rhode Island’s forest has matured, with 51 percent now in saw timber size class according to the most recent forest survey. The lack of young forest impacts species that need the unique nesting and feeding habitat that these early successional areas provide

And on preparedness:

13. Does RI have sufficient manpower, money, and resources to prevent or cope with a major forest fire?

The general consensus is that RI does not have the manpower, money, or resources to prevent or cope with a major forest fire.

Some observed problems are:

A. There is not enough manpower and it is perhaps not young enough for forest fire fighting within the rural volunteer fire companies.
B. There is insufficient training.
C. There are not enough vehicles and equipment.
D. Access roads into forests have been gated and allowed to become overgrown and inaccessible.
E. Due to insufficient manpower and funds, fire towers are no longer maintained and manned, except the very few remaining, during the most extreme fire danger periods.
F. There are more homes in or near forestlands and that increases the danger of fire and presents a higher risk of residential property damage, human injury, and loss of life.
G. There is a buildup of fuels on the ground and not all deep woods areas have water holes to supplement tanker trucks.

Some recommended solutions are:

A. More financial, technical, and material support, recruiting, training and equipping of rural
volunteer fire companies from town, State, and federal governments.
B. Development and distribution of a Comprehensive Mutual Aid Plan between volunteer and full-time fire departments, between towns, the State, including the RI National Guard, other states, and federal agencies. Chief David Shaw, of the Pascoag Fire Department, believes that the State Fire Chiefs Association is developing such a statewide plan that, in addition to fire, covers Emergency Medical Services and Hazardous Materials Response.
C. Providing manpower and resources for adequate resource management of private and State forestlands, and perhaps supervised, selective, timbering that could provide funds for forest management, clear fuel buildups, maintain water holes, and clear fire access roads into forests.
D. Creative ideas to keep fire towers open are to lease space on them to cell phone companies to hang their antennas and maintain them, or to rent the towers as overnight camp sights to hikers/campers.
E. Promote the passage of strict forest fire prevention laws, post them throughout forests, and enforce them.
F. Provide major forest fire prevention education, as in the “Smokey Bear” program in schools, through literature distribution, as part of general forestry education seminars, and through the media.
G. Encourage all persons, when traveling near or through forestlands, to carry cell phones and
report any evidence of forest fires immediately.

I’ll try and follow up in person to see if these layoffs did occur. My understanding is the fire patrolmen all had enough seniority they would be “bumping” — while the Patrolman positions would be eliminated, the actual worker would “bump” someone else and take their job causing junior employees to actually be laid off.

Checking the DCR’s website today, they are hiring seasonal tower operators in at least Carver and Sandwich, and a seasonal “fire laborer” in Leominister.

Mass. fire officials fuming over wildland staffing cuts
October 22nd, 2009

BOSTON — Fire officials are fuming that high-paid pals of Gov. Deval Patrick have kept their cushy Department of Conservation posts while the agency is axing more than half of the state’s 30 forest firefighters.

The layoff of 17 forest firefighters will leave just one per county and means the state’s 42 fire towers — perches used to spot flare-ups — will go unmanned, officials said.

“It’s going to be a big hit to public safety,” said Trevor Augustino, vice-president of the American Federation of State, County and Municpal Employees Local 2948, which represents the forest firefighters. “They’re cutting with an ax, not a scalpel.”

The Herald reported yesterday that the DCR terminated 91 workers, but kept Patrick’s campaign manager’s sister, Patty Vantine, and two other managers she hired. The three make a combined $251,000 annually.

DCR spokeswoman Lisa Capone said 57 of the terminations were voluntary while 34 were pinkslipped. Of those 91, seven were managers. “Those percentages reflect the proportion of union vs. management throughout the agency,” she said.

Orange Fire Chief Dennis Annear, president of the Massachusetts Forest Fire Council, said the cuts have “destroyed” an effective service that’s been around for 100 years. Annear said the DCR jakes are crucial in rural western Massachusetts where they often lead under-trained volunteers into dangerous blazes.

“We use these individuals to lead a crew,” Annear said. “Some departments don’t have the right protective gear to go out in the woods and they definitely don’t have that expertise.”

Annear said the cuts are particularly painful since the DCR has been aggressively promoting tourism at state parks.

“Tourism is great but somebody’s got to pay to treat these people or go rescue them in the woods,” he said.

Capone said the DCR is “maintaining our commitment to public safety.”

Copyright 2009 Boston Herald Inc.

By Dave Wedge
The Boston Herald

I also found this in the November 11, 2009 DCR Stewardship Council minutes:

Patti Vantine, Director of Administration and Finance informed the Council on/of the following matters:

The magnitude of the current (2010) operating 9c cut was between 4-8%, however the final
requirement for DCR is 5.2%.

Cuts have been saved by mandatory management furlough up to nine days, an unspecific cut,
and an earmark that was removed.

Voluntary layoff and retirements are being wrapped up, and involuntary layoffs are nearing the
end of the bumping process.

A final projection number will be tallied once the full bumping/retirement process is complete.

Our state revenue has slightly increased for October.
o DCR was able to maintain six firefighters, one Warden in each district.
o The overall budget for DCR is $78,348,984 after the 9c budget cuts.
o Environmental Police has taken a $1.5m cut.

(DCR also transferred many of their parkway and bridge assets from the “Emerald Necklace” system around Boston to the newly formed MassDOT … I wonder how that factored into budget cuts if at all? Later on in the minutes it reported 55 DCR employees transferred to MassDOT, but that DCR would still provide snow control for the current budget year.)

A January, 2010 presentation noted that the DCR had seen it’s operating budget cut by 23% from FY2009 to mid-year FY2010. In 18 months it had lost 171 full time positions, including 54 to voluntary layoff / retirements, 37 unfilled positions eliminated, and 29 layoffs.

I wasn’t planning on another fire tower post today, then I stumbled on this press release today:

The Angeles National Forest Fire Lookout Association is currently seeking individuals for its volunteer Fire Lookout Program. The group works to restore, maintain and staff historic fire lookout towers in the San Gabriel Mountains. Volunteers interpret the natural and cultural history of fire lookouts and the surrounding Forest lands for visitors and help disseminate information on current fire conditions.

Fire lookout towers, one of the primary means by which forest fires were reported in the early 1900s, were closed on the Angeles National Forest in the 1980s. However, Vetter Mountain Lookout, off Highway 2, was reopened by the U.S. Forest Service and Fire Lookout Association in 1998, as part of a historical preservation project. Slide Mountain Lookout, located above Pyramid Lake off Interstate 5, was reopened in 2003.

Despite newer technologies being used by the U.S. Forest Service to detect fires, volunteers at these lookouts continue to practice vigilance and provide a valuable contribution to the conservation of National Forest lands.

Do you have to take a second thought I’d be all over that if (God forbid) I lived in L.A.?

Linking this back to New England, there is an active volunteer fire tower program in southern Maine, operating the towers at Mount Agamenticus, Mount Hope and Ossipee Hill.  Here’s an article from the Press Herald (archive).  Maine closed their state fire tower network in 1991, deciding aircraft were more cost effective.  This year, as covered in this post, they further reduced their aircraft coverage replacing the contractors with the Civil Air Patrol.

New Hampshire was vigorously defending their still state staffed towers in the 2004 Concord Monitor article (archive), but in 2009 they reduced the staffing by laying off the full time fire tower staff and offering them part-time positions to manage the towers on high danger days as detailed here (archive).

In addition to the 16 state towers in New Hampshire, a 17th is municipally manned by a career firefighter from Moultonborough, which in 1987 re-opened a tower the state had closed in 1981.  Ironically, in 1988 Moultonborough had a 316 acre forest fire, the largest in New Hampshire since a 1952 fire in Moultonborough covered 2,500 acres.

Massachusetts has, by far, the largest and most active fire tower system in use in New England.  You can see a nice video here on the Ludlow fire tower (archive).   Although the Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control does not staff all their towers all the time, they have some 43 towers available to staff as local fire conditions dictate.

Rhode Island doesn’t currently use their towers, although at least one is opened up from time to time for open houses (archive).  The others, from a casual observation driving by, are slowly rusting away.  Connecticut has removed all their purpose built forest fire towers, although some facilities (such as the observatory on top of the UConn water tower) that weren’t fire specific remain. While I don’t believe any Vermont towers remain in service, many still stand and unlike those in southern New England are open to the public to climb:
(I do have that archived as VT_Fire_Tower_Hike_WCAX_200806261758015082_3647538.flv in case the video disappears).

In the book, “Connecticut — A guide to it’s roads, lore, and people,” produced by the Federal Writers’ Project of the WPA in 1938, I found several references to fire towers.   Here’s some from eastern Connecticut:

Pomfret

Left on this road [Fire Tower Road off of Route 44 in Eastford] to the Pomfret Fire Tower, 1.2m, a steel structure rising 75 feet above the hilltop (alt.822).  From the tower is visible an imposing panaroma of forested hills and valleys, grassy clearings and cultivated fields.

Union
Mt. Ochepetuck is Bald Hill; this area has significantly changed.  The road described may or may not be today’s Bald Hill Road off of Route 190, at the very least Bald Hill Road goes to the summit referred to:

Left on this road, up a steep rocky incline, too rough for motor travel, is Union Tower, 0.5m, maintained by the State, at top of Mt.. Ochepetuck (alt. 1286).  On clear days an excellent view of the country for 200 miles around is obtained from this lookout tower on the highest point of land in the State east of the Connecticut River.

An interesting tidbit was Union, in 1938, was the last town in Connecticut lacking electricity.  I wonder if they had a telephone line to the fire tower?

South Carolina Forestry has this tale on their website:

Beginning around 1930, the Forestry Commission started building a network of telephone lines to link its firetowers with its firefighters. Agency personnel cleared rights-of-way, cut poles, strung wire, and maintained the lines.

Tower operators would spot a fire and dispatch the firefighter by telephone. Some firefighters were even equipped to climb the poles, tap on to the lines, and make reports back from the field.

This may have been the very first telephone service to rural SC; it was certainly the first to much of the state. At its peak, this system consisted of more than 2,000 miles of telephone line. When SCFC changed from telephone dispatch to radio, many of the lines were purchased by local phone companies and co-ops. The last lines were disposed of around 1970.

When the lines were being built, a woman in Greenville County agreed to provide a line right-of-way across her property in exchange for the SCFC’s promise that they would provide her service as long as she lived. She outlived the SCFC’s use of telephones in that area, but the Commission honored their agreement until she died.

Storrs
The Storrs tower needs no description — it is the shelter still on top of one of the water towers at UConn.

Sterling

Right on the gravel road [Sterling Hill Road from Route 14-A], a short distance to the Sterling Fire Tower, a 90-foot lookout visible from the highway.

This tower preceded Ekonk, which appears on the 1943 topographic map of the Oneco quadrant at 670′ elevation about 1-1/2 miles south of this location, which was at 610′.  I presume the new Ekonk tower replaced both the Sterling Fire Tower as well as the Mount Misery Fire Tower in Pachaug State Forest, whose base was at 440′ elevation.  The Ekonk site is now the location of a State Police radio tower that also hosts a number of other agencies from one of the finest radio tower locations to server the New York City to Boston corridor.

Many fire ponds were constructed during the Great Depression to provide a ready source of water to fight fires.

Created to ease the financial strains of the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, employed over 3,000,000 young men* between 1933-1942.  The 21 camps in Connecticut provided barrack-style food and housing along with a small monthly stiped.  The men worked o a variety of conservation projects including forest road construction, recreation area development and fire suppression.

A system of fire ponds, each holding a minimum of 7500 gallons of water, served as the main water source for fire suppression in the state forests.  This particular fire pond was probably built by enrollees from Camp Connor in Stafford Springs circa 1936.   The goal of building one pond per 100 acres on state land and one pond per 200 acres on private land was curtailed by the onset of WWII and the closing of the CCC camps.  By 1941, the CCC had completed 404 water holes in the 80,000 acres of state forest and 269 holes on private land.

This fire pond, restored to the original conditionin 2001, illustrates one of several designs utilized by the CCC.

…

Many unrestored fire ponds can discovered along forest roads throughout Shenipsit and Nipmuck State Forest.

From this sign:

Sign at the Mountain Laurel Sanctuary, Nipmuck State Forest, Union, CT

This is the pond it refers to:

Fire pond at Mountain Laurel Sanctuary, Nipmuck State Forest, Union, CT

This is another style of pond:

Fire Pond in Natchaug State Forest, Hampton, CT

My observation is these ponds would have been most useful during the spring fire season, filled by snow melt and spring rains.  In a normal summer today these are dry by mid-summer, and thus not available in the summer and fall fire seasons during a drought.  I doubt this would have been any different seventy years ago.

They would have been useful for filling Indian tanks, as well as portable pumps and hose.

Today forestry agencies around the U.S. continue to improve rural water supplies, often under the auspices of the U.S. Forest Service’s Rural Community Fire Protection cooperative program they administer.

RI Rural Community Fire Protection Program
RC&D [Resource Conservation & Development] partnered with the DEM- Division of Forest Environment to provide rural communities with fire protection assistance. In 2006 RC&D designed, produced, and
distributed 200 Dry Hydrant Guidance Manuals to local fire departments, held four workshops across the state on the program and received 19 applications for dry hydrants from six rural fire departments. When installed these hydrants will improve fire protection for an estimated 13,000 residents of these communities.

Rhode Island Resource Conservation & Development 2006 Annual Report

These static water supplies are considerably larger then the old hand dug fire ponds of the CCC, designed to support both wildland and structural fire protection.  This is a representative dry hydrant installation:

[Photo of the Hampton hydrant will go here, once I find it...]

There is a couple ways to estimate coverage for the old water holes.

One is we can assume a square grid with perfectly even distribution.  100 acres would be approximately 2,000 feet square.  From the center of that square to a side would be 1,000′ while reaching a corner would take 1,400′.

Another is to use a circle centered on the water hole.  A circle 1,200′ in radius would cover approximately 100 acres, while a circle 1,650′ in radius would cover approximately 200′ acres.

* For perspective, the U.S. population in 1940 was 134 Million, of which 5.6 Million were males between the age of 20 and 24.  A proportionately sized program today would employ some 7 Million men, with about 2 Million in active service at any given time.