- [Joe, voiceover]: Welcome to Big Sky Country.
Montana is known for wide horizons and spectacular sunsets.
Ooh, that's nice!
Let's just sit with that for a second.
But locals know that these bright orange summer skies can mean trouble.
While some people are watching the burning embers of the setting sun, others out there on the edge of the wilderness are on the lookout for a different kind of glow, wildfires.
Mark Hufstetler is the lookout at Baptiste Tower in Flathead National Forest, Montana.
- [Mark] It's my job to observe this valley and watch it over the course of the season.
- [Woman Over Radio] ...reporting 0%.
This concludes your afternoon fire weather forecast.
- [Mark] If you see a fire, you'll seldom see the orange flame, but you'll see a light gray smoke that rises.
The height of the fire lookout era was during the Great Depression when there were several thousand active fire lookouts.
After World War II, the number began to decline as aircraft and other forms of observation began to take precedence.
- [Joe] But Flathead National Forest has gradually increased the number of fire lookouts in recent years.
Oh, hello puppy.
Aren't you cute?
- [Mark] We found that there's still an important role for having an actual human observing the forest and observing for fires.
If there's a second fire lookout who is also able to see the smoke.
You can often be as precise as the helicopter and the aerial observers are.
- [Joe] But due to budgetary cuts and an increasing dependence on technology over human observers, many states are leaving fire towers empty, and wildfires are getting more frequent and more severe.
- [Reporter] California is battling 28 major fires.
- [Reporter 2] More than a million acres have burned.
- [Reporter 3] This is likely to be the most substantial loss of life from fire in the state's history.
- [Joe] So how and why do wildfires start?
Fire needs three things in order to burn, fuel, oxygen, and heat.
The planet has warmed about 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880.
This has made our woodlands drier, which means more fuel for fires.
The heat that ignites a fire can happen naturally, but most often wildfires are started by humans.
That's not good.
Things like unmanaged, trash fires, poorly maintained equipment, or even carelessly tossed cigarettes account for more than 8 in 10 wildland fires.
And wildfire season typically used to last just a few months each year But in some Western states, burn season has more than doubled in length since the 1970s.
- [Mark] A tremendous factor is increasing human occupation of the land.
Something called the wildland-urban interface, which means that people live closer to the forest and have the potential to be more seriously impacted by fire when it happens.
- [Joe] More people across the country are moving into the so called WUI.
It's actually the fastest growing land use type in the contiguous US.
That's due to a general increase in population and an increase in the cost of living in urban areas.
Living near the forest is nice, don't get me wrong.
But WUI growth means more fires and more complicated decisions for the people whose job it is to control them.
- [Mark] Determining whether an individual fire is a good thing or a bad thing.
It's a matter of looking at a very complex interrelationship of environmental, cultural, political, social factors.
- [Joe] attitudes about wildfires used to be much simpler.
Fire, bad.
For decades, the predominant view was to eliminate all fires anywhere, at any cost.
That attitude can be traced back in part, to August of 1910, when a wildfire broke out in the Rockies and burned three million acres of land.
It was known as the Big Burn, and it's still one of the largest wildfires in American history.
After the Big Burn, fire managers took a new aggressive attitude, eliminate every fire, no matter what.
They even got a mascot.
- Smokey!
- Smokey's everywhere, reminding us to guard against fire.
- [Joe] And that was the way the US dealt with fires for decades.
But in the 1960s and '70s, the opinion on fire began to shift.
Fire researchers began to call for fire control instead of eradication, and made the case for regular controlled burns.
But they weren't the first to recognize fire's value to a landscape.
For generations, indigenous communities across America used controlled burns to foster species diversity, and to keep the land healthy.
Since the 1970s, forest managers have been working to clear out potential wildfire fuel that built up during those decades of total fire suppression.
But blazes continue to destroy swaths of land across the West.
It's clear that there's more work to be done.
- [Mark] Our assessment of fire has become more complex and more nuanced.
We're able to take advantage of some of the technological tools that have made some lookouts more obsolete.
And we use them to improve our own lookout detection skills.
Have a good day, Baptiste.
- [Joe] In addition to aerial observers and fixed cameras, which have been in use for decades, fire managers are testing out unmanned aircraft to observe and fight fires.
One company called Drone Amplified, built drones that can set small fires for prescribed burns from the sky, and even start fires along the firebreak to safely burn out fuels and prevent a wildland fire from advancing.
We even watch fire from space.
NOAA and NASA's geostationary operational, environmental satellites, rotate and sync with Earth using infrared sensors that can detect heat at any time of day or night.
New satellite images are beamed down several times per hour, which lets us pinpoint fires and act much more quickly to control them than ever before.
- [Mark] We have access to a variety of new tools to observe and record the forest.
That's a wonderful thing, but it doesn't completely replace the humanity that's involved in observing and interpreting the forest.
- [Joe] As the climate shifts and wildland growth becomes less predictable, fire managers need more data than ever to keep up with our changing world.
And human observers will be necessary for success.
- [Mark] I know every inch of the ground that is under my care.
I can observe how the landscape changes over time.
I think it's important that everyone find a place to call their own.
It doesn't have to be Baptiste lookout.
It doesn't have to be in the mountains or the forest.
It can be anywhere.
But I think establishing that connection with our world is extraordinarily important.
It's something that makes you a more complete human being.
