Vienna Cornish - Lookout

Vienna spent the last 6 years stationed at a Lookout Tower in southern Idaho, interacting across several agencies for all aspects of forest management. She took a round-about path to her career in land management, and shares many thoughtful and balanced viewpoints from her time there, and what she sees coming in the future.  She's been watching while different technologies have been introduced - or at least attempted to be introduced - and the reality of how useful those efforts have become so far. She also brings a valuable perspective on the human career and compensation dynamics that will inevitably be influenced by adopting technologies.

Transcript

Bryan 0:04

good morning and welcome to the solving wildfire podcast. I'm your host, Brian Gardner. Today we have Vienna Cornish joining us. Vienna has spent the last six years as a lookout in Southern Idaho. Living and working from a tower that is very difficult to get to. The only way in is several miles on foot or by helicopter. So she's developed a broad view of wildfire, really of forest management. And seen technology and innovation tiptoeing its way into the industry. She's also very aware of the human element for innovation in wildfire, the people in the agencies, as well as the public. I think you'll appreciate her very thoughtful and balanced views she's developed over the years and I'm excited to get her experiences shared with everyone. Vienna. Thanks for sitting down.

Vienna 0:53

yeah, I am, I'm excited too. I'm curious

Bryan 0:56

Can we just start with your path into wildfire or rather your path into forest management. Everyone has their different backgrounds and those influence their views and perspectives. So let's start with some of your background.

Vienna 1:08

So I have a very kind of helter-skelter journey. I attended college in Northern California primarily with the intention of just getting a degree and some education to set myself up better for life. So I didn't have a specific career trajectory and I considered a few different things. I ended up studying film and television production and French so nothing related at all to like working in the woods or or fire. But I did grow up in an area where we were bordering a lot of public land and there wildfire was definitely a presence during the summer season in the area. And new people who worked in those sorts of jobs and worked with the Forest Service doing other projects too. While I was in college, one of my sisters did also work on a fire crew, a hand crew, a forest season. So, I was a little bit familiar or knew some people that were, more directly involved too. At that time I had no interest. And my mother actually also did work as a fire lookout. Not until I guess probably after I had graduated college. That was something that she had known about since she was young and had wanted to do. So, I became a little bit more familiar with that expanded role and different ways of being involved because of that. And I visited her, a few times here and there over the years while she was doing that. But I was working in film production in Los Angeles and then I worked, doing a bunch of different things. Splicing, fiber optics teaching piano tutoring working in administration just a lot of different things. And it was just sort of like the right convergence of events and, being at a specific stage in life, I was trying to I was still trying to find what to do with my life, my niche, where to be. Um, I still am honestly like, that really hasn't changed, but things aligned. Where I was trying to set my life up so that I could spend time working on some creative projects, some writing and videography and photography projects. But I didn't want to be working on other people's passion projects, which is really what I had been doing a lot of in Los Angeles. it's a lot of work, but I didn't really have the investment in those things, so I was like, I would rather participate in these as a hobby or, like how, however you want to call it a passion project and support myself another way. And then if it were ever to become something that could be self-sustaining. Great. So. I had this urge to just sort of like, do the idyllic writer go out into the woods and sit in a cabin by myself and write kind of idea. And my mother had been working at a lookout for probably 8, 7, 8 years or something by that time. So I thought, Hmm, I never had wanted to do this before, but maybe that would be a good situation to get me along the path that I want to be on. I suppose there, there is a another piece of the story that happened a little bit earlier in my journey of doing a bunch of different things. After I had moved out of Los Angeles, I came back to Idaho for a time without a particular career plan and ended up doing various things here. But I also spent a summer working maintaining trails on the Payette National Forest. So, That was my first official work for the federal government with the Forest Service. And I loved it. It was one of the hardest and most rewarding jobs that I've done. But I also, we, we were stationed. At a remote work center where we would spend our days off and then work 10 day hitches into the woods backpacking and working trails. But we were, when on days off, I would spend time with the local fire crews that were also stationed at the remote work center. And then there were also. Lookouts in that area that would periodically come off the mountain and we would, cross paths. And so I became a lot more familiar with that particular niche of the forest in this part of the state of the country. Just a little pocket of familiarity. So when it came time where I realized, oh, actually the lookout might be something that would be fitting for me right now. I had the thought in my mind of where I wanted to go because I had worked there doing trail work, so I sent in my applications and, followed up with calls to supervisors in the area and I, I also was aiming to try to work out a lookout that you could not drive to, that it was only accessible by walking or helicopter if there was a, an air a landing pad nearby. So I did know kind of like, even specifically which district I wanted to work on. So I like connected with the people.

Bryan 6:08

So the only way into your tower is hiking or by a helicopter.

Vienna 6:13

Yes. Most of the time it does end up being hike. Hike, but I get food delivered by helicopter too and gear slung in. So, I've gotten to ride on one a couple

Bryan 6:24

not many people get to hitch a ride on a helicopter for their morning commute.

Vienna 6:28

Yeah,

Bryan 6:30

I'm getting this vision of the movie scene with you, duck in your head and run her for the side of the clearing. Oh, wind blowing everything all over her and the helicopters taken off with the pilot on his headset.

Vienna 6:42

yes. Yeah it's a, it's quite a novel experience actually. And, and that's, it's not the reality for all lookouts just happens to. What works best where I am. They used to haul supplies in with pack trains, mules and horses. But yeah, there are arguments for practicality in both directions, and cost efficiency. But yeah, so I ended up knowing some people like having some shared there were some mutual connections between me and some of the hiring officers who spoke well about me. And I got hired on basically to go work at a lookout. That was kind of my dream scenario off the bat. And I also was offered to start working early in the season with the fire crew that was sort of stationed out there near where I was going to be a look. And they said, yeah, if you're interested in going through the guard school firefighter for training we can set that up for you too. And I was like, yes, yes, yes. Whatever you're offering, I will take. Which is a little interesting because I have throughout most of my life, had quite a, maybe not quite classifiable phobia of fire, but quite a intense fear and aversion to it. Like, paranoid. Our wood stoves growing up, setting things on fire or campfires, getting out of control and stuff. So I knew though that it was, this was like one of those things I wanted to just face head on and kind of overcome that fear. So guard school all of that stuff and starting out with supervisors who were for one, Grow lookout and very supportive of that. Part of the fire management program was awesome and then also who were invested in getting us the experiences as lookouts in other roles that were available outside of Lookout season as possible was really beneficial. And I think. Suited what I was looking for too. But I didn't even really know how much I wanted to, learn about fire or become involved. I was just like, this is a cool experience and it seems like good information to know and something new and let's do it. So I have looked, worked at that lookout for six different summers now and. Most seasons, I've had work with the agency before moving into the lookout and after moving out of the lookout in various different roles. But primarily either with a hand crew doing various prep or actually fi responding to wildfires but also a lot of prescribed firework. So I think that a lot of my interest in fire ecology and the issues surrounding, the dangers of wildfire and the benefits of wildfire and just the larger conversation as a whole too with the prescribed wildfire and fuels programs helping to do surveys. For plots that they are preparing to burn or plots that have been burned over time. Several different re-entries with fire. Doing surveys of tree stands, trying to get a sense of the health of the forests what, what types of trees are growing there. At what stages of development and life, longevity. These trees are. and some plantations and just like getting to see a sample of a lot of different forest areas primarily in this region. So it's somewhat limited to the ecology around here. But that are, in various different stages of treatment. And of course then the plots that have just like completely burned from wildfires. I have also worked with crews responding to wildfires outside of the state, some to to a lesser extent. But yeah, that may have been a bit long-winded, but that's basically my journey into fire. And just to prep you this coming season, I still do love the lookout life and there's certainly a lot more to share what that entails relating to fire two. But I have taken a position on a heli repelling crew just to do primary fire fighting for the summer. So, that hasn't started yet, obviously. But that is sort of what's in the future for me at this point. If things work, how they're supposed.

Bryan 11:02

Not long winded at all. This is actually very convenient and useful. I just set you on a direction and you just go very well. Um, let's take a pivot right now to life as a lookout. What is it like working out there at the tower?

Vienna 11:17

Yeah, sure. Yeah, life at the lookout is, it's, it's unique. It's just one person. Well, there are people that work Lookout Towers as a couple. Um, typically just one person is hired by the agency to staff a lookout, though. There you have flexibility if I know people who have done it with small children. So, you know, families that lived at lookouts and worked there. For me, I. as of now unattached I have a lot of lookouts have pets too, so I have had a cat with me actually at the tower. Um,

Bryan 11:52

So is that cat there to keep you company, or is it there to chase off the bears? Because I'm not sure that cat's going to do a bunch of good against a bear. If it comes chasing down your tower.

Vienna 12:01

exactly, yeah. A lot of people, I, I do know some lookouts who are strategic about having a dog partly for the benefits that they could add to kind of warding off wildlife. But then there are certain situations, well, so lookout life can vary a lot I can't give you statistics off the top of my head, but there have been a lot of lookouts built across the continent. A lot, most of them are no longer in service. And a lot of them have fallen apart and degraded. There are a few that are, still maintained, but as like, Overnight rental cabin kind of ideas. But there are lookouts, throughout the Boreal Forest of Western Canada that, average 9,230 plus feet. Tall, tall, like metal aerospace towers. And then there are the, the one story little cabins that just like sit on the top of a. You know, high in the mountains. And they're ones you can drive to and they're ones that are 30 miles of trail in. And ones that, primarily people get lifted in and out with helicopter ones that are in the wilderness and you can't take any aircraft or motorized things to them. So it, it really varies a lot for me. My, my lookout. Accessible by trail. There is a helicopter landing pad not far from the lookout. And it's about a six mile hike from the nearest road. And then that road, it's a good hour and a half to two hour, two and a half hour drive to the nearest like, Year round, inhabited town depending on the snow. So there are a couple ways you to drive in and sometimes, early in the season the snow blocks off one of the routes. So that's why the drive time varies so much. But it's, uh, it's far enough out

Bryan 13:59

So this is remote enough that you differentiate between year round towns and partial towns.

Vienna 14:07

Right. Well, technically, Technically, the, settlements that are not inhabited year round may not generally be categorized as towns like they don't have post offices per se. They receive mail. By aircraft, et cetera. But they do get blocked off by snow. And so some people will fly into remote airstrips during the winter or whatnot, but yeah. They're not, they're not very serious towns. But anyway, it's it's a ways out. It's actually as the crow flies, if you're coming from our sort of District office to the lookout by helicopter. It's about five or six minutes, so it's actually not very far. But it's just like a big range of mountains right in between and you have to drive all the way around to get to the trails. So, it's quite a ways out there. Life as a lookout is a lot of things. I could spend a very long time telling you about that. But it also really how it shows. is, depends on who the lookout is. Um, some lookouts make violins while they're up there, some lookouts. Um

Bryan 15:13

so you being up there on a tower for the last six years We got some background on how you got to the lookout tower, what you wanted to do there, the variety of things there. One of the things you spoke about was a lot of these towers are, just disbanded. But I'm curious about. There's an element where humans are indispensable and cannot be replaced by sensors and machines and robots, for lack of a better word. But there's also a place where robots and machines and sensors can do the job better than a human. What are your views on the replaceability of humans for Lookout Towers? What's your sense of that?

Vienna 15:55

Um, it is definitely, um, a hot topic in the world of lookouts because a lot of the people who work as. As lookouts are very guarded about the job, and they do have a sense that it's slipping away and that there's not as much investment within, the Forest Service Agency. At least, and I can't really speak so much for the Bureau of Land Management or the Parks Department or Cal Fire or other agency state agencies that run lookouts. There are definitely a variety of attitudes within different forests and regional management about the usefulness and the priority of the lookouts. So, There's the forest that I work on, the pat has a collaborative effort with a state agency, as kind of a local semi run state agency, the Southern Idaho Timber Protective Association that also has two lookouts within the same geographical area as a lot of the, the payout forest. And just as of last summer that state agency decided to not staff those lookouts and to set up cameras in them. Um, I haven't heard any reports about, I, I don't actually know if those cameras have been installed and what type of equipment they have been using or will use and monitoring and what usefulness they've got out of those. There has been also one other lookout on this forest that has been in the rotation for staffing. But they didn't have the personnel to put somebody up there for the past six or so years, and they did stick a camera up there too.

Bryan 17:43

is, this because no one wanted to go or because they didn't have the funding to pay someone?

Vienna 17:49

there, there are different answers you will get. And I don't know, I, I cannot speak to the official reason, but I feel like even an official answer may not be the full truth. Um, part of that, so it's actually, it's actually a lookout that I was interviewed for my first season. but the dis it's run by a different district than the one that actually hired me. And the district's sort of were working together and sharing interview, burden. So I was interviewed for a different district and then got hired by the one that I wanted to be with. And because I didn't step into that lookout that year, they didn't have enough applicants, which is not necessarily necessary that there weren't people interested in working it. But the, the application and hiring process for the US government can be quite difficult and cumbersome. And there are a lot of ways that that has changed and evolved even over the years since I went through that process. So there were people I know that said they would've loved to have staffed it. There are also options, even if they don't have a big enough pool to hire from for the full season, you can do a severity hire for part of the year or higher lookouts on contract if fire danger gets high enough for those critical fire times. And they, the management for that district chose not to. Um, I can't really, I cannot speak to why they did not, but there has been some rumor spread that some of the lookouts they had dealt with previously were a lot of work. They were high maintenance and they were apparently not really providing enough usefulness for tho those management people to think that it was useful enough to re backfill those positions. Whether or not that's true, I don't know, but I, I do know that the. the range of people that can work in this role and that have worked in this role varies enough that sometimes you have people that maybe are not super suited to this situation and, they may be able to perform the critical roles of the job, but it may also come with a logistical expense or, various different trade offs of, of keeping them safely and happily employed in those roles. So yeah, there, there are a lot of different things that may play into why that one has not been staffed with humans. There's been actually very little conversation about what the camera has done. And again, I don't know the specifics of what the equipment is that's up there. I have not heard of it being used specifically to identify a start that they responded to and were able to like, contain quickly. I can't say that it hasn't happened, but I don't know. Also, I know that there are much more advanced systems than what they have, they don't have the state of the art. And there are various places I've heard stories about all kinds of different systems being tested out. So I know there's a lot of variation within that realm too.

Bryan 21:22

yeah, you had commented earlier that prescribed fire was one of the largest activities that you were engaged in. One of the most valuable activities, and that's one of the places where a camera, it's not identifying new starts, but prescribed fire is a very important piece of forest management and preventing outta control fires from happening later on. One of my opinions formulating is that prescribed fire will play a larger role in the future of wildfire than it does now, and that's largely. In order to fund good prescribed fire properly, we have to spend less on containing out of control fires. And I think there's a body of opinion that is coalescing around that within the forest management world, and I can see where a camera might be valuable enough. But you, having been up there having some experience with what a camera can do versus what a human can do, what are your thoughts for the prescribed fire role and function? Will a camera be able to replace a human? Or is there an extra benefit to having a human in that tower?

Vienna 22:31

So there are, yeah I feel like I kind of skirted some of the more pointed points that I had initially intended to get to. Other reasons to why lookouts that have existed many years ago. And that they have not kept up the same number. And some of that is accessibility. Like before aircraft was used a lot in firefighting. There were, there was a very slow response time getting to fires. And so having. Lookouts that were generally called smoke chasers because they lo they worked at the lookout and they would Spotify and then they would hike out to it and put it out. It was, it was part of their job to also respond. And so having the lookouts kind of spread out and sprinkled as, densely as possible definitely helped in that regard. And so being able to get smoke jumper planes and helicopters out to remote areas decreased a lot of the need for the lookouts to be so densely sprinkled throughout. Another part of that too is that there have been larger areas of land designated as wilderness or maybe falling under other types of designation. Where policy has changed about responding to fire and it isn't always a full suppression effort. The they, the Forest Service, since the beginning of the 20th century had initially been a full suppression idea. Thinking wildfire is always bad. We must put out fire and conquer it. No fire. And then with time we've learned that that is not a great way to keep fire under control because the landscape gets overgrown and fuels get over cured, and once a fire starts, they just they're not, it's not always possible to control them, no matter how quickly we can get to them. So, that has, of course, paired with a growing effort for the prescribed fire and trying to learn better how the ecosystems respond to fire and, and grow best within that. So there, there are areas of the west and all, around the world too where if a fire starts, we would like to know about it as soon as possible. Partly because there are a lot of values sprinkled throughout, in holdings. People that have had houses out in some of these designated wilderness areas for a long time and it's still something we wanna preserve. And if there's fire going to impact these people, they want to know so that they can protect them. But otherwise the attitude then is to let the fire run its natural course in that landscape and sort of serve instead of us going in, introducing and doing the the managed fire approach letting it be a natural fire that serves its natural role. So there are then those areas where it's less critical for us to have the immediate or up close detection and response that we that historically they did want also. So as a lookout I feel like there are plenty of lookouts that may not become as invested in, the evolution of fire management and fire response. So it depends, it's hard to make value judgements about some of these things and some of the human element to a lookout, as opposed to a camera can be very individual. and it can be rather abstract too. Like there are concrete things, for instance, lookout serve. primarily I think the designated core role of a lookout is early detection and reporting of wildfires. So locating them, knowing as closely as possible where they are, seeing them as early as possible and then communicating that. But that is only one small part of what we do. Another part can be broadly summed up by this idea that the forest service and fire management throws around a lot of situational awareness because when dealing with wildfires, there is that huge risk factor, that's just inherent for humans and property. And the best way to mitigate the risk is to know what's happening around you, right? So, the lookouts, aside from looking, they're listening 24 7 to their radios. And the radios there's a lot of different traffic that comes across that. Of course, it's the dispatch office. But then you have local crews. You have fire crews that are responding to fires or that are on patrols. You have trail crews fisheries and wildlife crews, and all these people that are dispersed throughout recreation. People that are keeping track of campgrounds and campers and like monitoring. Wilderness trail use and all of these things, and they're just sort of like spread throughout the, the woods. And the lookouts are generally, positioned on high points and oftentimes there's like radio repeaters at lookout sites. And so they can oftentimes hear all of the radio traffic that's happening in a huge part of a forest around them. And there have been multiple times where, you know, a lot of the time you're just listening and there's no need to step in. And there's, most of the stuff that you're hearing, maybe pretty mundane. But there are times where fires start and blow up very quickly. Fires can start anywhere, anytime, kind of thing. You can't always predict where they're going to happen. But there may be people in those locations that are unaware of what's happening or how close the fire danger is to them. And it's even outside the realm of fire landslides. There have been all sorts of incidences with aircraft, especially where I work. There's a lot of backcountry flying and a lot of airstrips. So there's a huge component of this, like we call us human repeaters where we're ingesting all this information and we're trying to sort of grow our situational awareness as large as possible to know what's happening all the time. And like you hear things that may seem completely inane at any given point, and then, 24 hours later a situation comes up where you're like, actually that's very critical information and then you can pass it on to the pertinent people. So I feel like that is part of the lookout job as a human that. there may be some ways to innovate technology to serve in a lot of those, like in, increasing radio communication in a way where you don't have so many broken connections and fallouts there. So there may be a lot of technological advances. but there is also like a pretty strong element of intuition I feel that comes along with sitting in a stationary location over a long period of time and seeing the patterns. And you're noticing like forecasts and noticing that the weather may not line up exactly and you know, you're hearing what's going on. all around you with within the full, the agency and people that are working. But you're also interfacing with the public. There are a lot of lookouts that are very frequently visited by the public and they kind of serve as secondary visitor centers cuz they're usually pretty cool spots. And people come up there and they're like, well, you know, what is this? What is your job? And you know, and they wanna hear. Or you come up in the middle of the summer and there's like three huge smoke plumes that you can see from that area. And they're like, what's that fire? Where is it burning? You know, like, and so there's a lot of that human interaction that happens, depending on what your lookout situation is. I think that there, there's probably, you ask 10 lookouts this question, you'll get 10 different answers. kind of thing. But there are a lot of lookouts that feel there's an invaluable human element that would be lost if we replace this with cameras. That being said, I think that there, there's definitely the human error that comes too. It's very difficult to be vigilant 24 7, all throughout the summer, oftentimes working on your own isolated. Not that the chances of fire starting are the same constantly. So, as a lookout over time you often learn when to be a little bit more vigilant or when you can sort of pull back and relax a little bit. And that changes too based on what your view shed in your scene area is. If you have a lot of area that is inhabited, and frequented by a lot of recreators, you have a much higher chance for human start. Whereas there are areas where primarily there's a chance for human starts. Sure. But most of the starts that will happen over the course of the season are going to be lightning started. And then of course there's a little bit more consistency with patterns that go into knowing when those are more likely or less likely. But there's definitely that human el error possibility. You could just be cooking your lunch for a half hour and look up and there's a, a five acre fire burning that you hadn't seen. And that's not to say that if that ever happens, that it's the lookout's fault or something like there, there have to be some sort of give and take and expect with expectations. But that's why you have. multiple lookouts and the why you also have aircraft and then also like the satellite component in cameras and things I think can be really useful in some of those situations. I could continue on too with back into that prescribed burning conversation, but I'm gonna give you a chance to direct the conversation if you would like to.

Bryan 32:45

This, the stuff you've been going through has been so valuable. I kind of wanna just let you keep going and I don't want to pull you off track. I'm more likely to introduce human error than to introduce human wisdom in this case. let's go to the prescribed fire. I do have a couple questions A, A vision I guess that's coming together of what a possible tech assisted future might be. And it really comes back to one of my courses at m i t. It was a mouthful of a, class title, human Supervisory Control of semi-autonomous Systems. And it was about finding that balance where you have you have the right amount of human engagement to keep that situational awareness, but you don't overload the human with too much stuff to where they end up getting, overloaded leading to poor decisions. I could see a future where, it of course seems to make no sense to put cameras and infrared sensors and satellites and then put somebody in the middle of downtown Los Angeles and give them the job of being responsible for forest out in Idaho, especially when you can have far less expensive forest out in Idaho and just put them in a trailer out in Idaho and have a person or a small team of people basically be the shepherds for a large section of forest. To maintain that, human awareness, the situational awareness of all the non-fire things going on that you spoke about. I can see that being feasible from a human perspective, from a technology perspective, and be desirable from the people who want that job. But let me comment quickly. I really appreciate the human, the public interfacing piece there. Especially when we get to fires. You say people come up and there's three plumes of smoke. What, what is going on out there? Cuz they've never been able to see from that kind of a vantage point. And our culture right now is if there's a plume of smoke that's bad and smokey the bear is gonna be out trying to stop that plume of smoke. One of the cultural things we need education on generally is that there is good fire and that becomes prescribed fire. I think one of the things that allows us to do prescribed fire, right, is to have the capability to stop that prescribed fire. At the moment it gets out of where we've prescribed that burn. Before it gets outta control. We need to let it burn, but we need to know the boundaries and the limitations where once it passes that boundary, we fight like a mad dog to stop it from getting out of control. I think we don't have that capability yet, which is why prescribed fire is still a dangerous and risky thing. But let's go to, the stuff you've been talking about without me getting in the way has been great. So let me get out of the way again and let you just go where looks useful.

Vienna 35:38

Okay. I, I, I am going to back up even further to when you first sent me your email, just because I, I think it's an interesting distinction. When I saw your email domain as solving wildfire I recoiled a little bit and I think that a lot of people involved in firefighting and fire management probably would. Not because they don't see wildfire as an issue that is, kind of out of control and impacting a lot of people very negatively, but it does sort of, automatically set wildfire up as a problem that needs solving rather than as a very necessary and integral part of the natural ecosystem. So things get very messy very quickly talking about fire and prescribed fire because for a lot of reasons, but the obvious ones are because fire burns people's houses down and it, it destroys forests and, it ends lives and all these really horrendous impacts. And there are, a lot of prescribed fires, obviously, that have also gotten out of control and resulted, thinking about New Mexico last year some of the largest wildfires down there were started out as prescribed fires. And there are a lot of different ways to look at that. We as an agency, they, of course did a enormous amount of study and review on some of those fires in the situations in the early stages and like what happened and what things could have been addressed or changed to prevent that from happening in the future. And of course that is a concern. Nobody is, trying to, I shouldn't say nobody, but I don't personally know people involved in this sector that are, not aware of the potential negative impacts of fire and that we want to avoid those. Like I had mentioned briefly before about the history with the Forest Service and fire fighting efforts early in the 20th century full suppression with this attitude like fire is a thing we will conquer the way things have progressed and the state in which we've reached also including global warming and drought and things like that. The ecology is such that even if we could, implement, prescribe fire to the fullest extent that we want to, right? That we know it's going to require in order to keep healthy forests and in order to keep the ground fuels burned down and that, that we could throw as much money at that as we want right now. There are still gonna be situations because of the degradation of the ecology up to this point where in my opinion, fire is not gonna be able to be controlled. At least definitely to the extent that we, that we would prefer because it is its own element. It's a, I have a friend that just calls it a demigod because it is its own thing. And sure we understand fire, we understand the elements that have to be present for fire to exist, the fire triangle, the, you know, fuel, oxygen and heat. And that eliminating one of those is how we get rid of fire. So we have these concepts, but when you go out into these natural environments where, I don't know, I think it's, it there is a bit of hubris in the human attitude that we can just sort of always control fire. Or that we could get a point to a point where it is completely 100% controllable. And maybe that is sort of a shortcoming in me and a lot of other people with our attitude towards this, this project. And it's probably good if there are people out there who are like, yes, we can, like, we can figure out a way for for nature and humans to coexist to the benefit of both of us, without error. That's great. I'm a bit more cynical than that. Um, But because of just the point that we are at in history with how the landscape is and how, what our resources are and the extent to which we have developed technology and can fight fire I feel like it's definitely a transition that we're in a phase of transition. Trying to get to a point where we can be more responsible and create more sustainable sustainability and, healthier ecosystems, et cetera. But there's growing pains in there for sure. And I, I don't know the best approach to getting from where we are now to the sort of idealized management. I do think that money is a big part of it and the allocation of funds. But there also needs to be a lot of education because there are a lot of people, even in the last decade or more our learning that prescribed fire and introduced fire is going to be necessary. But there are a lot of impacts that people experience from those that they don't like. Even if it stays within its contained lines like smoke. I don't know how, if there are people out there that are trying to innovate, like how do we manage smoke? Is there a way to manage it better? I mean, I know that there's a lot of effort and information out there about. Weather patterns and timing prescribed burns to happen at times when you have good ventilation, et cetera. And we could expand to the broadened grander concepts of controlling weather whether or not that is something, people feel is ethical or to what extent, et cetera. So, you know, like really looking sort of futuristic idealistically. Maybe there's a way to introduce fire in environments that we can control enough to like actually control the direction of the smoke, et cetera. Or we capture the smoke. I don't know. But obviously that's much further into the future. And at this point we do still have to deal with some of these residual effects of smoke. And there's also the emotional response to seeing the landscape burning. And there's also a lot of attitudes. that have come out of a history of this sort of like, fire's bad, let's conquer it. Idea where people that are out in the landscape hunting also see the fire and they're like, you're gonna kill off the wild Turkey population. Or, and there are certainly a great number of people that understand that those wildlife species actually also benefit from fire being present in a, in an ecosystem and taking care of certain fuels and letting new growth happen and stuff. But there's a lot of education I think that is going to have to happen for the collective attitude to change and shift. And that until there is also, I think it will happen sort of concurrently, but until there is this greater attitude shift toward. The positive ways that we can use fire and introduce fire is just going to be harder for us to, to keep fighting. And there have been people that I worked with in prescribed fire and fuels management programs that are brilliant and super committed to this, and have been working with shoestring budgets for years and doing incredible work in the landscape with prescribed fire. And so if we can have those people and get them more resources, I think that there will be momentum building and we'll be able to expand that at a quicker pace for sure. It's interesting to think about when you have the prescribed fire in the landscape and those situations where. it's getting maybe testy and has the possibility of getting outside the lines that we're, in inside, which we're trying to keep it. And what sort of technologies could be available for improving those responses? it's interesting I, I haven't really done a lot of thinking about, about those efforts on a grander scale. Because, because of how the budget disparity is placed, we have, like the Sikorskys and all of these aircraft and things that are on, I mean, even outdated, but a huge amount of equipment. and money and resources that are available for the emergency response to wildfires. Because obviously when the fires get to this point where they're threatening homes and lives it's sort of just like, we'll give whatever we have and it doesn't matter, cost, et cetera. There's not that attitude about prescribed fire so often. There, there are requirements when fires are scheduled and implemented about how many, engines, aircraft, et cetera. You need personnel you have to have on scene in order to manage that fire, to make for sure that it, that it stays inside the lines. But those numbers are nowhere near the numbers that are put into use when a wildfire is threatening homes and people's lives. So in situations where you have wildfire and you're like, based on our calculations and all the research we've done and the planning, this number of people should be sufficient for containing this fire. If it were, to get outside of its lines. There's definitely a disparity between that number and the number that you throw at it once it's already outside the lines. So yeah, it's very interesting to think about, okay, what if we actually had a much more robust resource for addressing that potential, and of course always planning that you're not going to have to. But I think it would be great if we did. You know, technology available with faster response and at a greater intensity and volume. But I, you know, obviously I think there's probably a lot of work to be done in looking at what can we do to keep the fire from ever getting outside the lines that we are setting for it. That, that's a really tough question because you have a lot of land borders where you're introducing fire and then you have private land up against public land and you have private landowners that are not so invested in working with prescribed fire and, efforts in various different agencies that are involved. So. I don't I have a lot of things going on in my head and like very specific kind of scenarios in which I've dealt with prescribed fire and, and where these things kind of get tricky. But it, I don't feel like I have the a, a great way of digging into those things about like, droning on for too long. Um, but anyway, I don't know. If any of this is serving your questions,

Bryan 46:52

This is, this is actually, very useful and it opens up those unanswered questions. It opens up the realm of possibility. And that's the, the big place. The real question is where do we invest resources and attention in exploring which possibilities, which are most likely to have the magnitude of outcome. One thing that you touch on that we don't apply near the resources to keep the, a prescribed fire within its bounds, that if we say double those resources, it would add this little bit to the overall budget. But instead we're being penny wise and pound foolish. And so we save a few pennies by having the smaller resources for prescribed burn and then the handful that do blow up, then it's just blank check to do whatever we need to stop those things. And that's one of those things that academically you can make the trade offs, but getting it actually in there is there's an answer as to why this isn't being done and that's, that's one of the harder things to fix, but maybe it is also a, a public education thing and such. I can see in terms of getting 21st century technology into wildfire, I'm looking at the possibility of these entrepreneurs or even incumbent technology developers, if they can get involved as a supplemental add-on to whatever prescribed burn is going on. They're not out there fighting a raging fire that's already huge. Because at that point, no incident commander wants to take the risk on a unproven team, unproven technology. But if they're already out there doing prescribed burn, they know there's risk and they've checked all the boxes on how much protection they need to keep it in there. Then an entrepreneurial team, whether from legacy or a startup, they come in and they are supplemental to whatever is going on. Then you can almost put two boundaries on there and say that our technology team is gonna keep it within boundary A. And then we have our, our established team that if it's if it gets outside of boundary A where the new startup team, fails in their job, then we've got the prescribed people to check the boxes on removing liability for who's responsible for the fact that this thing got out of, got out of control. That might, that might be an avenue. And it gives, I think a big piece is the relationships of trust that need to be built between the operators, between people out in the fields and that might be a, an avenue to get there. there were several other things you brought up that, are again, that realm of possibilities. I am curious, why are you choosing to go from the tower, this dream job for six years? And I understand that a dream job for 6 years doesn't mean it's your dream for 60 years, but why are you choosing to go from a tower to the dangerous part of the job?

Vienna 49:56

Um, yeah, there are several things that jump to mind when you say that. part of it is just my, my nature as a human Um, I, the last summer that I was up at the lookout, I arrived and I just had this sense of like, I know this, um, there, there was a bit of a, of a sense of familiarity that was good, but it was also like, Hmm, maybe it's time for me to not be doing this anymore. Just a little bit of like stagnation. And I'm somebody. Who feels like I need to be making progress on some level and probably to an arbitrary extent but in order to be like living the life that I feel like is fulfilling. Um, and I considered multiple different things. I was like I feel like I either need to change up how I am a lookout, how I operate up here possibly change where I am, a lookout, maybe going to a different one. And I've considered that many times and there's a lot of different things that go, that play into my thought process there. And maybe even pairing changing location with how I do. Just sort of like how I structure my time and my priorities while I'm on the mountain. Or I was like, I could just do something completely different. I feel. This particular move I felt like I kind of, I was being pulled to do something a bit drastic. And given, given my age and having not worked for a dedicated season with the fire crew this isn't a very common move. Going from lookout to a repelling crew and it felt, it felt like enough of a challenge and enough of a sort of hair brain idea that I think this can, can servee whatever, shake up I, I'm looking for whether it's the right decision, uh, uh, you know, like right wrong, who knows what those things are. Uh, but I don't know. It remains to be seen. We'll see how the season goes. I did arrange with my supervisors to have the option to go back to the lookout the following season. They're very gracious to work with me on that. We'll have to see how the season goes. And this is not completely different. it's still related to fire management too, so it's not something that I haven't been involved in even while working as a lookout. So yeah, it's just kind of like a switch up. I do look forward to being on the ground a little bit more and taking my experiences as a lookout and doing prescribed and having limited experience with crews into the sort of more full-time firefighting and seeing the whole operation and the, the culture from a different perspective. So yeah, it's a little bit there. Just to direct my own conversation though, I, I think it is worth mentioning, and I, I, I think that the topic of money in wildland fire is going to change from like a conceptual, sort of organizational level to an individual level. Like attitudes are going to be different. I think one of the challenges that we face in innovating, especially with any sort of autonomous technology or, or, technology that may replace roles that are currently being filled by humans there, there's the concept of relevance just as a human in our, idea of what is life and the meaning of life and all of that. But there's also the concept of money. And I know that you did mention before about the machines the Forest Service Agency, CLI fire and like being able to innovate within those is basically impossible. That I think that is key for multiple reasons. Of course, there's just the bureaucracy to deal with. There's also, despite a lot of conversation about firefighters being underpaid for the work that they do, which I am not discounting at all it's not for me to really say, to put a value, a monetary value on the work of any individual person. There are people that do this job because they love it, because it, they are called to do it but also because they get paid to do it and. when speaking about wildfire versus prescribed fire, there is currently a big difference how much you get paid working wildfire versus prescribed fire. So even if we could throw a lot more resources, money and people on stuff at, trying to like really implement wildfire or prescribe fire there's gonna have to be a shift in how the resources and the money gets distributed. I think because there's a lot more motivation for people to work fighting wildfires when they know that their bank account is going to set them up for the off season once they are done. As opposed to sure. There may be people that are like, I like the. The involvement and the ethics and all the concepts and everything involved with prescribed fire. But if I do this work, I'm gonna end the season, with a third or half as much take home pay, or a significant drop. And I think that on a, like a conceptual level, people are not so opposed to innovating, but there is going to be resistance and there is resistance to innovation when it means eliminating work that pays me more and sort of forcing me into a job that pays me less. So I think that especially in the larger agencies, that is gonna have to be addressed as we shift hopefully focus from wildfire fighting to prescribed fire fighting. Of course, As much as even if we could throw a switch and throw as much money to prescribe fire as we want right now, we would still have wildfires that we would have to just have the blank check and, send everything at it as possible because that's the state that the ecosystem has come into. So there is a lot of that growing pain, sort of like managing the wildfires while trying to build the, the prescribed buyer program and the disparity of funds and the way the funds are allotted. So even outside, I think that there's a lot of individual excitement about, yeah, what kind of technology and innovation can happen to help us on both fronts. But then there's all this resistance to I mean it within any industry that, technology is doing jobs that humans historically did. There's that resistance. but then also being able to get people excited about here are what you could do instead. Or different roles that can be filled and there are still gonna be jobs and paychecks that come with those jobs that are gonna be commensurate.

Bryan 57:16

Yeah, there's a lot in there, and that's definitely one of the things that needs to be factored into what will the next wildfire industry inevitably look like, and what does it have to look like from a compensation standpoint, from a career development standpoint, lifestyle. All these different things. You, chose to go to the lookout life. You didn't go to school for it or anything. It was just you went to school for film and French and then, and then went to wildfire and now you're gonna go repel out of helicopters cuz you need to do something else hair-brained and crazy, There's also talent. I've found a lot of people can be passionate about a lot of different things and be fulfilled and happy in a lot of different things. The smart choice to do is if you've got three things to make you equally happy do the one that pays the best! And then you get career happiness plus financial happiness. So if we want to properly manage our force and if we want the right talent doing the prescribed burns, you'd be an idiot to think that talent overseeing prescribed burns is not a factor in the risk involved in doing those prescribed burns. A big piece too is the attractiveness of the job that, that you're bringing'em on for and how much passion is there? Cuz passion and dedication is a real thing. In, in the wildfire space, you do have a lot of passionate people that can be directed there, especially people who choose to make it their career. So it's only gonna serve us to be able to compensate those people enough that they can stay where they're passionate by getting the right kind of money there and. In the long term, it costs us less to pay the right people to stay there than it does to pay whatever teams we can cobble together because we've got a hundred thousand acres burning up. But again, that gets back to where it's academically smarter but harder to do from the allocation standpoint, this has been super interesting and super helpful. Life as a lookout. The air traffic you talked about as a lookout, being aware of all the back country backwoods flying that goes on. that's one of the big concerns and obstacles to having drones out there fighting fire, especially during an active fire. The pilots that are flying, the heavy things, dropping stuff, are not comfortable. And the, the aerial operators, the people on the ground responsible for keeping track of that traffic are not really confident in having humans and drones in the air at the same time. And that's a, it's a legitimate concern and I think that's where operational trust has to be built up gradually. You can't just have a technology solution and people are gonna automatically trust it, especially if you're the one flying that helicopter or that airplane. Is there anything regarding aerial conflict in the backwards and a lookout having that situational awareness, that adds a degree of safety to aerial coordination.

Vienna 1:00:19

I would say, there is, there's potential role, with how, how few lookouts are staff these days. it would be, it would be very coincidental if you had one that could be super instrumental. cuz I feel like where they would be, it would probably be a combination effort, between radio, technological communication, whether it's like flight follow and you're looking, you're following drones or actually visualizing, in the air what's happening. there could definitely be usefulness there. But it would be limited somewhat geographically. but with the way that, radio communication works right now, there are definitely situations where lookouts would be instrumental. I'm not sure. I feel like a dispatch office or, aircraft dispatch and whatnot would be able to perform most of the other roles just as well, not even being, geographically in proximity. It's hard to say, not being a pilot myself, I imagine that, pilots would have a lot more to say on that topic. There have been limited situations where, drones have been used mostly for reconnaissance, in proximity to my lookout. But it's so early on in the usage, they're very careful to keep that separate from any other aircraft in, in the area So there hasn't really been crossover, that I'm aware of.

Bryan 1:01:57

In the limited usage of drones that you've experienced, what is your sense, your feeling about the people like you, the lookouts and the other agency operators? what's your sense of their comfort and confidence in bringing drones into your work?

Vienna 1:02:16

I think there are a fair number of people that are excited about it, that are, really curious to see. And I know a fair number of people that, that actually have been working with drones and that have been pushing, they're like, we need to be doing more of this. there's also a lot of skepticism. I think in part because of a lot of the drone usage that has happened so far, they're pretty small drones and weather impacts them very quickly. I mean, you can get pretty large drones that weather will impact too. and they'll be grounded. But the, the size of aircraft that they are using so far has been u it's been useful and I think people are seeing how the usefulness can expand, but there are also been multiple situations where they hoped it could be useful and then they just had to ground them because of weather. So I think there, there's a mix, like there are people that are skeptical and they're people that are, super enthusiastic and of course people that crossover.

Bryan 1:03:16

All right. Well, thanks a lot Vienna. This has been super interesting and super fun. I'm curious to see your thoughts and your experience after you've spent this summer with a dedicated crew that's it's part of your adventure and your journey. And I'm curious to see after you look back on this, this summer,

Vienna 1:03:41

Yeah. How my perspective might change. Yeah, I am, I'm excited too. I'm curious to see what, how this might change me and my life and stuff, so yeah.

Bryan 1:03:53

That was Vienna Cornish on the solving wildfire podcast. I'd like to thank her for coming onto the show, sharing her experiences and views. And I'd like to thank you for listening.