HIGHER CALLING: State fire tower repair job is a tall order

By JAMES PENTLAND

Staff Writer

Published: 05-21-2023 9:04 AM

GOSHEN — Seventy feet off the ground, looking out over the treetops of the DAR State Forest, gusty winds were keeping Sean Cadigan and John Celona inside the fire tower.

The two men, who are the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s tower repair and construction crew for the whole state, had planned to install a new ice and water barrier on the roof of the tower, which has begun to leak. But the vapor barrier, a heavy 3-foot roll of material, would act like a sail in the wind, making the job too dangerous.

Not that their job is ever exactly safe.

As they both said, more than once, “It’s not for everybody.”

On a roof repair job such as this, they wear a harness to which they fasten a locking extension reel — like a seat belt — known as a fall arrester that is clipped to a belt securely attached to an antenna bracket. Only then will they step out onto the single layer of scaffolding around the outside of the four walls.

The scaffolding is constructed with significant help from a ground crew, using a rope and pulley to haul up the 16-foot planks. On this dry, windy day, the ground crew had been called away to a brush fire.

The high-altitude workers don’t think about accidents.

“Fall is a season,” Cadigan said.

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Perhaps the danger is a deterrent for job seekers, because Cadigan is starting to worry that he won’t be replaced when he retires this year or next. He’s the DCR’s only full-time repair guy, and he wants to be sure Celona has a partner when he hands in his hammer.

As for many jobs, applicants have been scarce. Cadigan said one recent prospect had plenty of experience — as a bartender — and another, a fire tower enthusiast, is at present incommunicado and in possession of a cooler full of many years’ worth of on-the-job photos that Cadigan lent him.

Low-tech

Fire towers are a simple, low-tech means of detecting fires. The system relies on an operator or lookout. When smoke is spotted, the lookout uses a device installed in the tower called an alidade to determine the compass direction and communicates via state and county radio with neighboring towers and fire departments. With an alidade sighting from one other location and the aid of a large-scale fold-away map in each tower, the fire’s location can be with triangulated with great accuracy.

There are 42 active towers from Martha’s Vineyard to the Berkshires, according to DCR Chief Fire Warden Dave Celino. Two are in Hampshire County, also known as Fire District 10 — the DAR tower on Moores Hill in Goshen, at 1,767 feet above sea level, and the considerably lower Mount Lincoln tower in Pelham.

Other key towers in the region are in Shelburne, Mount Toby in Sunderland, and Holcomb Hill in Chester, which is in occasional use.

Towers may have simple antennae for radio communications or a satellite dish and a whole host of cellular equipment.

Lookouts are stationed in them during burn season, which is about over now in Hampshire County but lasts all summer on Cape Cod, Cadigan said.

Cadigan, 59, and Celona, 39, have both worked as lookouts in their time.

“We’re all fire tower operator trained,” Celona said. “Detection is the main job.”

Towers are always in need of repairs — to the roof, the siding, the antennas, stairs or a new paint job on the steel structure. Cadigan remembers putting a new roof on the Goshen tower in 2009, a two-week job. This time, they’re adding another layer.

“We’re trying to save them,” he said. “It’s triage.”

Working out of Brimfield, the two are centrally placed, but that still means a lot of driving most days. This is the fourth year Celona has worked with Cadigan, but he’s still a seasonal employee, working for DCR from mid-March to November.

He would like to keep doing it, and maybe become full time. The ranks of full-time repair workers have dwindled from five to one since the time Cadigan started on the job.

As for Cadigan, he’s getting ready to close the book on 28 years as a repairman and 40 years with the department.

“My mother always told me people would look up to me, but I don’t think this is what she had in mind,” he quipped.

James Pentland can be reached at jpentland@gazettenet.com.]]>