Mount Cardigan fire tower reopens
Special Deputy Warden Bill Bellion, of Canaan, and Forestry Aid Dillon Mock, of Canaan, look on as Special Deputy Warden Kevin MacDonald, of Deerfield, left, and New Hampshire Forests and Lands Patrolman Dave Kullgren, of Francistown, right, assemble an Osborne Fire Finder in the newly rebuilt Cardigan Mountain fire tower cab in Orange, N.H., on Thursday, June 27, 2024. The four were among a party of six Forests and Lands workers who refitted the cab with new maps and the original nearly 100-year-old restored fire finder, which helps lookouts sight and take a bearing on rising smoke. (Valley News - James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. valley news photogrpahs — James M. Pattersond
Forest Ranger Nate Blanchard talks with members of the Sunapee Women’s Adventure Group during their hike up Cardigan Mountain in Orange, N.H., Thursday, June 27, 2024. Blanchard was on the mountain to help re-install fire locating equipment in the tower’s cab, which, along with the cab on the Belknap Mountain tower, was replaced in 2023, with two more on Federal Hill in Milford, and Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard, in the process this year. (Valley News - James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. valley news photographs — James M. Patterson
Special Deputy Warden Kevin MacDonald, of Deerfield, left, and Forests and Lands Patrolman Dave Kullgren, of Francistown, right, help Forestry Aid Dillon Mock, of Canaan, middle, into a pack carrying a metal backed map locating the Cardigan Mountain fire tower and four others in the surrounding region, to be carried to the top of the mountain in Orange, N.H., on Thursday, June 27, 2024. The map will be used to triangulate and pinpoint the location of smoke spotted from the tower. “Usually by July 1, I’ve hiked this maybe 25 times or more, but not this year,” said Mock, because the wet summer weather kept fire danger low. (Valley News - James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.
Forestry Aid Dillon Mock reads a distance scale stretched across the surface of the Cardigan Mountain fire tower’s Osborne Fire Finder in Orange, N.H., on Thursday, June 27, 2024. Mock, who is also a Hartford Firefighter and Windsor County Sheriff’s Deputy, shares the part-time duties of staffing the tower, which include fire and smoke observation, occasional trail maintenance, and being a public liaison, with Canaan Fire Capt. Alton Hennessy, and Canaan Firefighter Bill Bellion. The biggest benefit of staffing the tower, said Mock, “is being an ambassador to the mountain.” (Valley News - James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.
Forestry Aid Alton Hennessy, of Canaan, middle, explains the use of the Osborne Fire Finder to locate smoke and fire to Sharon Kotz, left, and Tim Gagnon, right, of Pelham, N.H., at the Cardigan Mountain Fire Tower in Orange, N.H., on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. The 15 state-operated fire towers are staffed on weekends between April and October regardless of fire danger, and on week days when fire danger is high. On this low-visibility day, Hennessy spent most of his time teaching visitors about the tower’s history and how the equipment is used to locate fires. In the spring, he sighted smoke rising from an un-permitted burn in Springfield, N.H. (Valley News - James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. James M. Pattersond
Alton Hennessy, of Canaan, N.H., records his observations and the number of visitors - 19 adults and four children - to the Cardigan Mountain Fire Tower before signing off from his shift in Orange, N.H., on Saturday, Aug. 17, 2024. With low cloud cover obscuring his view throughout the day, Hennessy was one of two lookouts staffing towers in the state. (Valley News - James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com.
Special Deputy Warden Bill Bellion looks out over hikers on the Cardigan Mountain summit on a lunch break while installing fire locating equipment in the fire tower in Orange, N.H., on Thursday, June 27, 2024. The New Hampshire Forest Protection Bureau has recorded 52 wildfires burning 49.5 acres as of Sept. 6. Bellion, who is also a Canaan firefighter, a wildland firefighter and former Mascoma High School French teacher, introduced his former students Dillon Mock and Alton Hennessy to the job of fire lookout. (Valley News - James M. Patterson) Copyright Valley News. May not be reprinted or used online without permission. Send requests to permission@vnews.com. James M. Pattersond
| Published: 09-09-2024 6:31 PM |
ORANGE — The Mount Cardigan fire tower reopened this summer, after six months of construction, giving the three fire lookouts who work there a more comfortable spot to search for smoke.
The new cabin, also known as a cab, boasts a metal railing, opposed to the old wooden one, and double pane windows.
“It’s really nice,” said Alton Hennessy, fire lookout and Canaan fire captain. “In the cold weather it’s less drafty, the new windows are a big upgrade and a big help. With the higher ceiling it feels like there’s a lot more room in the tower.”
The new construction replaces a 100-year-old cabin, which had leaky windows, rotting wooden siding and lead paint, that had been on the state’s radar for replacement for a decade.
The Cardigan tower, which is usually staffed May through October, reopened in June when the fire scouting equipment was hauled back up the mountain.
It had been out of commission beginning in July of 2023 when the old cab was demolished.
To assemble the new cab, workers constructed four walls on the mountain in a matter of hours on a windy day last October. That same day, a helicopter placed a new roof atop the walls. Construction wrapped up last December.
Like the old one, the new cab is 100-square-feet and sparsely furnished.
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“We have our map and our fire finder and other than that that’s really it,” Hennessy said.
The cab has new maps, a new pair of binoculars and an upgraded radio, as well as a 100-year-old restored Osborne fire finder — a flat, round contraption that is 2-feet in diameter and used to pinpoint the exact location of a fire.
“In order to find a fire you really need three towers to triangulate,” said Bill Bellion, Canaan’s special deputy warden.
Each of the three towers use a fire finder to run a line on a map, where the three lines touch is where the fire is. It’s possible to locate a fire with just one tower if the fire scout is “very knowledgeable” about the terrain, Bellion said.
The state operates 15 fire towers which are manned during “periods of high fire danger.” The purpose of the towers is to detect fires early before they become catastrophic, according to the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
The state received $1.2 million in federal money through the American Rescue Plan Act to replace both the cab on Cardigan, and the cab on a fire tower on Belknap Mountain in northern New Hampshire.
Careno Construction, of Portsmouth, N.H., completed the work with help from Connecticut-based Valley Restoration.
About 250 wildfires occur in New Hampshire annually, burning, on average, an acre of land each.
Since Sept. 6, 2023, there have been 52 wildfires in the state, which have burned 49.5 acres, according to New Hampshire Forest Protection Bureau Chief Steven Sherman.
While it is unknown how many fires are detected from fire watch towers across the state, Hennessy, who has worked in the Cardigan fire tower for three years, said, “It’s pretty hit or miss. It could be you see three (fires) in a day, it could be you spend three or four shifts up there without seeing any.”
The goal is for the Cardigan cab to be occupied each weekend, but with low visibility, rainy weather conditions, and limited availability of the scouts, the new cab has only been staffed a handful of times since it re-opened in June.
In New Hampshire there is a “split fire season” said Chris Guiterman, research scientist for NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information.
It’s both in the “spring between snow melt and green up” and again in autumn when the forest floor is covered in oak leaves.
“We don’t get the big burns like we see out west but I believe there are much more brush fires than we know of because there are small fires that get put out quickly,” he said.
But forest fires aren’t all bad, Guiterman added. “Fire is not this monolithic evil thing. It certainly can be catastrophic, but when it behaves well, it’s a powerful tool.”
Controlled burns are important for soil nutrients and creating open space in the woods.
Native Americans used controlled burns “to clear areas for crops and travel, to manage the land for specific species of both plants and animals, to hunt game,” and to prevent larger, out of control forest fires, according to the National Park Service.
Putting out spontaneous forest fires is important but he would like to see more resources allotted for the “prescribed fire that most ecosystems need,” Guiterman said.
The fire tower cabs on Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard and Federal Hill in Milford are the last cabs “in need of significant work to refurbish them,” said Sherman, of the state’s forest protection bureau. They are scheduled to be restored by the end of the year.
Hikers can reach the new Cardigan fire tower cab by making the mile-and-a-half hike to the summit. If staffed, hikers can go inside and learn about locating fires from the fire scouts themselves.
Emma Roth-Wells can be reached at erothwells@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.
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