STAF Spotlight: Scanning for Smoke
I’m 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’s not much a lookout can do once a fire is burning. Everyone knows where it is.









































