STAF Spotlight: Scanning for Smoke
I鈥檓 perched in Banner Mt. Lookout sixty feet above the ground. Five miles to the west, the Jones Fire tears through brush and timber. Smoke billows up thick and white, then a bruised purple-brown as it drifts south over the ridges to Grass Valley. Wind shakes the tower. I feel helpless. There鈥檚 not much a lookout can do once a fire is burning. Everyone knows where it is.









































