This spring marks the first fire season for the 16 new towers built in Pennsylvania last year. “The trees don’t have leaves on them yet, so you can see how everything would dry out.”īy the end of spring, leaves will block the sun from reaching the brush underneath and the ground will stay wet after it rains, helping to prevent fires from starting and bringing an end to the fire season.Īs nation abandons towers, Pennsylvania builds new ones
“You can see how the clouds have broken here and the sunlight’s coming down,” Polaski said. Most branches, like on this spring day, will stay bare until mid- to late-May. Today, a hardwood forest covers the area. They had a lot less resources and access to the fires.” “We didn’t have things like aircraft to keep fires small. “The roads we came in on today were maybe there, but they were small trails back then,” said Joe Polaski, fire forester for Moshannon. It’s still standing alongside a cabin where spotters once slept between shifts. The 98-year-old Knobs tower in the Moshannon Forest District is no longer in use. “I’ve solved a lot of problems in my life up in this tower.” The view of the forest is spectacular, as is the wind that rattles the tower windows. Sixty feet up, a hatch opened into a small room. He let out a laugh, then started to climb the wooden steps, which he’s done hundreds of times staffing this tower and others nearby. “The one over there is cracked, but we have three good ones,” said Larry Bickel, a forest fire warden who retired from the Moshannon district two years ago. It’s 98 years old, with its four legs cemented into a grassy hilltop. The lookout’s iron, pitted by age, has stood through much of Pennsylvania’s conservation history. Larry Bickel, a forest fire warden who retired two years ago from working in the district, drove the truck to the original tower. The state has decided one of the best ways to spot them in places like the Moshannon State Forest is to go old-school. Pennsylvania doesn’t have massive wildfires like out West, but several hundred smaller ones take place here each year. One is brand new, used for the first time this spring along with 15 others across the state. The lookout towers are two miles apart, sticking out high above the treetops. “That’s the road we’ll go to, to the new tower,” said Hecker, manager of the Moshannon Forest District, nodding to the right on day in late April. John Hecker pointed out the window of the truck as it passed oak, maple and birch trees in the Pennsylvania Wilds.
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