By RHEA-FRANCES TETLEY
Staff Writer
Fire lookout hosts are on duty, checking the horizon for possible fire starts everyday within the San Bernardino National Forest boundaries during fire season, keeping the area safe from wildfires. The Southern California Mountains Foundation is now seeking additional fire lookout host volunteers for the 2025 fire season.
The job of the fire lookouts is very essential, watching for possible fire starts in our forest, and swiftly reporting them to enable firefighters to stop the fires while they are still small before much damage has occurred.
Now that the Keller Peak fire lookout is closed, due to fire damage from the Line Fire, the job of the Strawberry Peak fire lookout will be even more important this season to search for fires, especially since, so far, this winter, the rain totals have been rather low.
To volunteer for this important job, 14 hours of training are required to learn the procedures and how to operate the equipment such as the Osborne Fire Finder and to learn enough information to interact with the visitors to the tower, since the Strawberry Peak fire lookout is one of the most visited towers in the system. Because of the small size of the tower, only five visitors are allowed up at one time.
The Strawberry Peak fire lookout is a 14-foot-square lookout tower, a virtual room in the sky, that is all windows and has a deck that surrounds it for a better view of the forest. The lookout volunteer visually checks the entire forest every 15 minutes with binoculars, looking for smoke, as an early warning system.
The Strawberry Peak tower was built in 1933 and has been in operation almost constantly during each succeeding fire season. Initially manned by the U.S. Forest Service, it was reopened by volunteers in 1982. Located at a 6,143-foot elevation, the Strawberry Peak lookout is located above Highway 18 west of Rimforest and is accessed from Twin Peaks or Rim Forest. It receives about 4,000 visitors annually.
When a lookout volunteer observes a puff of smoke, it is tracked, located with the Osborne Fire Finder to identify its precise location and then reported to the fire dispatch center. When someone reports a fire to 911 that may be within the forest, that information is given to the fire lookout to verify the location, while firefighting equipment is dispatched to the scene.
In addition to being on the outlook for fires and recording weather observations, the fire lookout hosts welcome visitors from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day from Memorial Day until winter sets in. They invite those who are interested in volunteering to help them “watch over the San Bernardino National Forest and help keep the community safe through the fire lookout program.”
For more information on not only the lookout host program but all the other programs the Southern California Mountains Foundation offers, see their website, www.MountainsFoundation.org. The classroom training usually begins each year in April, but they are accepting applications now and finalizing those who need to take the training.
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