The 'tower man' must stay on his toes and keep a clear eye while watching over a wide area for potential forest fires.
Source: Union-News (Springfield, MA)
Author: GEORGE GRAHAM
GOSHEN, MA – A hot afternoon during this unusally dry spring finds “tower man” John DeNardo on full alert.
“Today’s a red flag day, ‘Smokey’ says ‘extreme,’ ” DeNardo said Tuesday, as he pointed to a dial on the wall that rates fire danger and boasts a likeness of the famous bear.
Eighty-five feet above the forest floor, 1,767 feet above sea level, DeNardo continually scans the horizon for “smokes.”
That view is one of the perks of staffing a tower for the state Department of Environmental Management and DeNardo takes pains to show a visitor all of its glories.
He points and twists. “There’s Northampton, Hadley, Amherst, Sunderland, Worthington, oops, there’s smoke!,” said DeNardo.
The finger goes down and up goes the binoculars, which DeNardo calls “goggles.” He peers through them, intent on deciphering the wispy plume.
“It looks likes it’s in Windsor, possibly Cummington,” said DeNardo, who has been working atop the DAR fire tower since April. “There’s all kinds of little smokes today.”
Politely ushering a visitor aside, DeNardo unhinges a large wall map from the ceiling. Once down, the map obscures the tower room’s entire northern window.
Using an alidade – a circular device mounted in the center of the tiny room – DeNardo gets a compass bearing on the smoke. He radios the information to nearby towers in Pelham and Leverett.
Two or more towers working together can triangulate the location of a fire by using strings mounted on each of their maps.
“It’s primitive, but it works,” said DeNardo, adding that the system can usually pinpoint the location of a fire within 100 yards.
Once triangulation is complete, DeNardo flips the map back to the ceiling. “It would be bad if a fire happens on the north side and I didn’t see it,” he said.
While keeping an eye on the growing plume of smoke – now pinpointed as being in Cummington – DeNardo resumes his visual tour.
To the north, he points out Mount Snow in Vermont, Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire, a hawk soaring on a distant thermal.
To the south, lies the Holyoke Range, “the Seven Sisters,” said DeNardo. Beyond the sisters, lie the hazy hills of Connecticut. Pointing below, DeNardo tells of seeing a black bear amble by the tower’s base last week.
It’s warm in the little room and grows even warmer after DeNardo closes the windows to keep out a sudden onslaught of black flies.
The Cummington smoke soon dissipates. DeNardo theorizes someone was burning brush in a backyard.
DeNardo said each detection of smoke bears a unique signature. Those who work the towers quickly learn to distinguish potentially serious threats from the innocuous, such as a farmer liming a field, or an 18-wheeler belching smoke.
“Even a big barbecue can look like a woodland fire,” DeNardo said.
Suddenly smokes are popping all over. Smokes in Holyoke and Northampton, two plumes curl over Pelham, a gray-white puff seemingly floats over the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
The radio crackles with fire reports, DeNardo spins the alidade, repeatedly unhinges the wall map to pinpoint the bearings and flips it back up again, radios in his own observations.
Fortunately on this day, none of the smokes blossom into serious wildfire, although a five-acre burn is reported in Westfield.
On rainy days, DeNardo attends training sessions and sometimes goes around to schools dressed as Smokey to warn pupils about the dangers of fire.
“I love this job,” said DeNardo, the youngest member of Fire District 10 and the son of Springfield firefighter Lt. Mario DeNardo. “It’s the only job I have had where I look forward to going to work every day.”