YOUNGSTOWN — A longtime Panhandle resident is facing extinction, but officials don’t care.
Slowly but surely the noble fire tower, quietly poking its head above the treetops on rural roads, has started to vanish. The steel scaffolding is yet another victim of technology, now relegated to near-antique status and seldom used.
Vigilant residents with cellphones spotting and reporting wildfires have replaced the once-important towers, said Brian Goddin, Florida Forest Service spokesman. An airplane also scouts across the rural Panhandle looking for fires.
“These are … a dying piece of equipment for us,” Goddin said.
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About 10 to 15 years ago the Chipola River District’s seven counties had about 20 towers. Now only seven remain in the district, with just one manned regularly. The district stretches across the Panhandle from Walton County in the west to Gulf, Calhoun and Jackson counties in the east.
Goddin said locals likely haven’t even noticed the towers disappearing, taking their presence for granted after coasting past them for 50 to 60 years. The state actually auctioned several of them off about five years ago.
Bay County’s only tower isn’t even owned by the Forest Service; it belongs to the Bay County Sheriff’s Office and has a camera and radio transmission equipment in it, Goddin said.
In the old days, tower lookouts would spot a fire and use an alidade — essentially a reverse compass — to sight the fire, Goddin said. Then the lookout would call over to another tower to triangulate its position and figure out how big it is.
The metal fires towers, though, still aren’t on the ash heap of history officially.
Jacob Beam, a forest ranger in Youngstown, said he still goes up in the Bay County tower when he’s alerted to a wildfire in the area. He said he surveys the fire’s size and triangulates its position from high above U.S. 231, at the State 20 intersection.
“Most of the time we just look and get a general direction,” he said.
Beam said he gets his calls from Chris Crocker in neighboring Calhoun County.
Crocker is a throwback from a past generation. She’s the only tower lookout left in the district and has been doing the job in remote Calhoun County for 20 years.
For eight hours a day, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Crocker sits about 100 feet off the ground, holding vigil, waiting to spot a fire and call it in.
“I guess you could say I’m constantly scanning,” she said.
The pressure isn’t so great when rainy and wet, particular like it was Monday, but during the dry summer or lightning storms in the spring, she must stay alert.
Largely though, it’s a waiting game. Crocker may see just one fire a month or maybe three during a busy month, like November when the leaves have fallen. She admitted it gets boring and the hours alone in the tower can leave her in a daze.
“You have to be a really laidback person to do this job,” she said.