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<\/picture>\nToday the service staffs just 71 lookouts in Washington and Oregon; 59 in California; and 52 in Montana, northern Idaho and northwest Wyoming, Mr. Owen said. Nationwide, including lookouts run by other federal, state and local agencies, perhaps 300 are in service, according to Gary Weber, treasurer of the Forest Fire Lookout Association, a preservation group. Of the others still standing, many are now vacation rentals.<\/p>\n And yet, as officials in northwest Montana will tell you, there are reasons the lookout isn\u2019t ready to disappear into the history books. Not completely. Not yet.<\/p>\n For Mr. Haugen\u2019s job is not merely to locate fires, though he says he can do this in a wider range of conditions than helicopters (which can\u2019t hover safely in thunderstorms), more precisely in some cases than planes (which can\u2019t easily maneuver in narrow valleys) and more accurately at times than satellites (which can mistake sun-warmed rocks for fires).<\/p>\n He also relays messages between dispatchers and firefighters in canyons where the mountains block radio and cell signals. He tracks local weather shifts that affect the way fires behave and move. And he serves as safety watch for crews on the ground, alerting them to blazes that could churn their way and planning escape routes. Fifty percent of his job, he said, takes place once a fire response is underway.<\/p>\n \u201cA human on top of a mountain can provide so much more than a piece of technology,\u201d said Jeremy Harker, the fire management officer for Glacier National Park, a stretch of which Mr. Haugen surveys from his perch in the neighboring Flathead National Forest.<\/p>\n August\u2019s deadly blaze on Maui notwithstanding, this fire season so far has been the nation\u2019s most subdued in a decade. Wet weather has dampened risks across much of California, though not in its northernmost forests, where large fires have raged in recent weeks. Alaska had its calmest season on record until lightning ignited a slew of blazes in late July. Fires have destroyed homes and prompted evacuations in Washington and Oregon.<\/p>\n Wildfires unfold across vast, difficult terrain, in fast-changing conditions and with a frightening amount of random chance. In places like Glacier, officials don\u2019t just put them all out. They must decide, sometimes hour by hour, whether letting a fire burn might provide ecological benefits or whether it is threatening enough lives and property to justify putting firefighters at risk.<\/p>\n New technology aids in these decisions, said Andy Huntsberger, a district fire management officer in the Flathead. But \u201cit doesn\u2019t replace the human element,\u201d he said. Since 1998, the number of staffed lookouts in Glacier and the Flathead has grown to 12 from five.<\/p>\n Nobody doubts that cameras are getting better at the basic mechanical task of spotting smoke. California has a network of more than 1,000 fire-monitoring cameras and sensor arrays, and it is augmenting them with artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n The Douglas Forest Protective Association, which handles firefighting on 1.6 million acres of private and government land in southwest Oregon, has replaced its eight staffed lookouts with a camera system developed by FireWeb, a company in South Africa. The agency now employs six people to monitor the feeds from 36 cameras between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. daily during fire season.<\/p>\n Scientists are getting better at monitoring wildfires from space, too, though satellites still have big limitations.<\/p>\n The main fire-observing orbiters used by NASA and the Forest Service get a look at the same location in the contiguous United States only a few times a day, and not always at a great angle. So even after a blaze is large enough to be detected, it might be three to 12 hours before a satellite sees it and the data is processed, said Louis Giglio, a professor of geographical sciences at the University of Maryland who works with NASA on satellite fire monitoring.<\/p>\n Weather satellites that sit above the same region of Earth can locate hot spots more speedily, but they can\u2019t always distinguish a small blaze from, say, a hot rock. And they work better on open, brush-filled lands like Southern California\u2019s than in dense forests like those in northwest Montana, where tree canopies can obscure a smoldering fire for days, said Ryan Leach, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Missoula, Mont.<\/p>\n Human lookouts, however, can see the smoke much sooner. \u201cThey can detect the fires quicker than the satellites and catch them when they\u2019re smaller, less dangerous and easier to put out,\u201d Mr. Leach said.<\/p>\n Canada, which has had a record-shattering wildfire season, is preparing to launch dedicated fire-monitoring satellites in 2029. Start-ups in Israel and Germany are building satellite-based early warning systems.<\/p>\n Yet spotting fires sooner might not be the biggest benefit of such projects, Dr. Giglio said. Instead, data from new orbiters could improve scientists\u2019 models of how fires spread. This could help officials plan evacuations better, and help land managers conduct more thinning and intentional burning of dense forests. \u201cI just feel like we\u2019re neglecting the less-flashy stuff,\u201d Dr. Giglio said.<\/p>\n Leif Haugen\u2019s setup at Thoma Lookout is about as unflashy as it gets. The glaring exception (And how could it be otherwise?) is the view, a spellbinding panorama of the Crown of the Continent region.<\/p>\n His cabin, elevation 7,104 feet, or just under 2,200 meters, is off the grid and has no running water. There are windows on all sides, an alidade for measuring angles and well-thumbed copies of \u201cMoby-Dick\u201d and Cormac McCarthy\u2019s \u201cBorder Trilogy.\u201d Sometimes Mr. Haugen cooks burritos in a propane oven that, if it is on for more than a few minutes, makes the whole place smell like mouse urine.<\/p>\n \u201cIt takes a certain kind of person\u201d to be a lookout, he said on a recent evening, sitting outside his cabin as the clouds dropped ghostly trails of virga over the valley. \u201cA lot of people think, \u2018Oh, I could do that.\u2019 And they do it for a year and flame out.\u201d<\/p>\n When did he realize he was the right kind of person? \u201cMy first season.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Haugen grew up in suburban Minneapolis, and for someone who spends a lot of time on his own in the woods, he still has plenty of what he calls \u201cMinnesota nice.\u201d He generously shared his time, stories and coffee with a reporter and a photographer while also acknowledging, rather cheerfully, that he hoped no more visitors would show up once they left. (\u201cNo offense.\u201d)<\/p>\n He spoke of the pride he took in supporting fire managers, firefighters and his fellow lookouts, whom he helps train in mapping, radio and safety skills. But he also relishes his job\u2019s more selfish aspects: the solitude, the long walks on empty trails.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have an intimacy with the landscape that you acquire,\u201d said Inez Love, 72, a retired teacher who volunteers as a lookout in the Flathead. Each summer, \u201cI leave feeling like I\u2019m leaving something dear.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Haugen has worked as a lookout since 1994, but he is still a temporary, seasonal employee, with no benefits. He gets overtime, but not as much as firefighters. During the off-seasons, he works as a carpenter and homebuilder, earning four times as much per hour as he does as a lookout, and he puts those skills to use restoring old fire lookout posts.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been two years since he built a house, though. City dwellers and remote workers flocked to Montana in the early days of the pandemic seeking big skies and open spaces, driving up home prices. Mr. Haugen was already feeling overworked, and the Covid boom gave him a good reason to quit.<\/p>\n Rising living costs are making it harder for the Forest Service to hire in the Flathead area, Mr. Huntsberger, the fire management officer, said. Five years ago, an opening for a firefighter or fire management job might receive 10 to 20 applicants, he said. Of late it\u2019s more like two or three. Even one.<\/p>\n The combination is inauspicious, and it is appearing in other parts of the West as well: more houses in fire-prone places, not enough fire experts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fire was here before us, and the fire will be here after us,\u201d Mr. Huntsberger said. What\u2019s new is all the development we have placed in fire\u2019s way, and the need to protect it. \u201cWe want to do that,\u201d he said. \u201cBut, you know, it creates challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2023\/08\/03\/multimedia\/00cli-firelookouts-quad1-02-qvfb\/00cli-firelookouts-quad1-02-qvfb-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg\")
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