CN&R obtains documents contradicting narrative about why the crucial tower is slated to be closed, while a community protests and candidates weigh in
By Ken Magri
On Oct. 9, amid California’s ongoing concern about wildfires, the United States Forest Service, or USFS, closed the Colby Mountain Fire Lookout Tower some 35 miles northeast of Chico in Tehama County.
Lassen National Forest administrator Robert Rice arrived with a crew to vacate the property. After 41 years of service as a seasonal lookout from May to October, Ken Jordan says he needed to negotiate for the one extra day on his contract to gather his possessions and leave the site for good.
The closure and reported plans to demolish the old lookout facility raise important questions at a time when Californians are more susceptible to wildfire than at any other point in history. Why would the federal government want to eliminate this vital resource?
The reason given is that the 91-year-old metal tower was in a state of disrepair, described by administrator Rice “a piece of junk,” according to Jordan.
“He told me they’re not going to put another penny into the thing, and was jumping up and down on the floor telling me what was so dangerous,” Jordan recalled. “He was trying to sell me a bill of goods, it was crazy. They claimed it’s a money decision because of lack of maintenance, but there’s something else going on.”
Jordan told CN&R that a safety inspection for the whole site was done on August 22. He was present when inspector Abraham Avedikian made the inspection. After the closure, Jordan called Avedikian and asked if there had been safety issues that required a shutdown.
“Oh no, no, not at all,” Jordan recalled Avedikian saying, adding that if this was the case, the tower would have been shut down that same day.
“He would have red-tagged it,” Jordan noted.
The closure was reported by an array of local media agencies in Chico and Redding. Jordan and Butte Meadows residents talked to anyone who would listen to their concerns, but nobody could get a copy of Avedikian’s report to verify what Jordan was saying.
“I had John Aronson from the Forest Fire Lookout Association up there, and he said, ‘this is fine,'” Jordan recounted. “They’re hiding [the report] from us.”
Praise for decades of dedicated service
Back in 2019, the Lassen National Forest Facebook page bragged about Jordan as Colby Mountain’s primary lookout while adding photos of the tower’s new paint job.
“He is a rock-solid, reliable, pin-pointing eagle-eyed lookout for 35 seasons,” the agency’s post stated.
Others in the community agreed.
“To hundreds of people across Northern California, Kenny isn’t just a lookout, he’s a symbol of endurance, dedication and care for the land,” observed Karla Larsson, a local resident and journalist who reported on the closure via Facebook at “Butte County Fires, Accidents and Crimes.”
In 2021, Jordan monitored the Dixie Fire, which burned almost a million acres in Butte, Lassen, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama Counties. As News & Review’s Howard Hardee wrote in a 2022 feature on Jordan, his Dixie Fire reporting on ridgeline flames alerted Butte Meadows and Jonesville residents of that fast-approaching fire.
“He got on the radio to help fire engine drivers navigate back roads and reach the critical ridge,” wrote Hardee.
Jordan also monitored the 2024 Park Fire along the section northeast of Chico that threatened to jump Highway 32, particularly near Forest Ranch.
“Our entire community is devastated by this decision, and we are all passionate about the tower and having Kenny in the lookout, his experience is priceless,” said Butte Meadows resident Laurie Bowers.
Bowers went on to explain that the tower’s two wildfire cameras cannot detect smoke as fast as Jordan.
“Our best resource is human, experienced eyes in the sky,” she emphasized. “It makes no sense at all to put our community in jeopardy and take our lookout away from us.”
The history of Colby Mountain Lookout Tower
The current Colby Mountain tower was built in 1934 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, a part of Franklin Roosevelt’s Depression-era work programs. It replaced an earlier wooden structure from 1912 which was the first-ever fire lookout in the Lassen National Forest.
The steel structure supports a 14’ by 14’ “model-4” style live-in lookout box with a catwalk and edge-to-edge windows on all four sides. Perched atop a 30-foot-high crisscross of structural beams and switchback staircases, the interior has a simple bed, gas stove and small refrigerator.
At just over 6,000 feet elevation, the views of Mount Lassen to the north and the Ishi Wilderness to the west are spectacular and well-suited for a lookout site.
The tower’s two fire-spotting ALERTCalifornia cameras are managed by UC San Diego. In 2012, more communication antennas and equipment were installed for the California Highway Patrol, including a generator vault, a propane system, photovoltaic system, a weather station and supporting infrastructure.
A congressmember and candidates weigh in
Congressmember Doug LaMalfa (R, Richvale) attended a mid-November rally in Butte Meadows organized by community members who want to re-open the tower next spring. He agreed to investigate the closure and grabbed a blank sheet of paper to start a petition but could not make any promises.
Community members also want to see Avedikian’s inspection report.
“We’re trying to figure out how to get it and we think Doug LaMalfa might be able to force that issue,” Jordan pointed out.
“LaMalfa took a Saturday out to spend several hours up here, not just at the meeting, but talking to community members and hearing their concerns,” said Bowers.
District 1 candidates for 2026 also commented on the issue.
Democrat Audrey Denney feels that the tower’s effective early detection is essential for wildfire prevention.
“I know how much the Colby Mountain Fire Lookout means to the communities it serves,” Denney reflected. “With 41% of this district made up of public land, fully supporting our public land managers and the critical infrastructure they rely on is one of my top priorities.”
Democrat candidate and State Senator Mike McGuire said that wildfire mitigation needs an all-hands-on-deck approach and promised to fight in Congress to keep the tower open.
“While the state has deployed hundreds of additional live stream cameras across California in the most fire-threatened regions,” McGuire said, “the Colby Mountain Fire Lookout and the dedicated folks who have staffed it serve as an essential tool to spot fires before they spread.”
“This lookout is a must-have, not a nice-to-have,” McGuire added.
Democrat Kyle Wilson feels that the Trump administration has its priorities wrong when it comes to fire mitigation.
“Budget priorities tell the truth about a government’s values,” the Santa Rosa Democrat argued. “When critical wildfire infrastructure is shut down while money keeps flowing to short-term projects that make for good headlines, it’s a clear sign too many decisions are being made for the next election, not the next generation.”
News & Review acquires the first copy of the inspection report
On November 24, News & Review contacted Inspector Avedikian about the issue, who replied that he had “pushed this up” to his supervisor Richard Hopson. While trying to contact Hopson, and after an email exchange with Lassen National Forest Regional Forester Jacqueline Buchanan, News & Review was sent a statement from a public relations group calling itself a “USFS spokesperson.”
The statement came with an attached copy of Avedikian’s inspection report, which confirms Ken Jordan’s assertion that the tower is in satisfactory condition.
The accompanying statement read, “Colby Lookout has not been decommissioned, and no work toward decommissioning has started. When the 2025 season ended, our seasonal lookout removed his personal belongings, which is a normal practice at the close of a season.”
The USFS spokesperson’s statement continued.
“We currently have two ALERTCalifornia fire cameras and a remote weather station operating at the site, and they continue to provide effective fire detection coverage for the surrounding communities. The Forest Supervisor is reviewing options for staffing the lookout next year and expects to make that decision around the start of the new year. Once the forest [service] has a final determination, they will share it with the Butte Meadows community.”
Humans vs. cameras and the slow demise of lookout towers
Earlier this year Scott Dailey, a fire ecologist at the USFS, reported on YouTube about the steady loss of lookout towers across the country, mostly due to their higher costs and upkeep when compared to newer fire-spotting methods.
“What killed the towers is technology,” Dailey noted in his report. “First came ready access to airplanes, then cameras, then infrared cameras and more recently the implementation of drones.”
But experts agree that human lookouts work better than current fire-spotting technology.
“Several studies have corroborated the fact that, to date, human beings assigned to fire detection sites (lookouts) perform more reliably, more accurately, and at greater speed,” said Michael Guerin, National Chair of the Forest Fire Lookout Association and an expert on emergency services. “In practice, at least in California, most often the cameras are used to confirm and better locate smoke already reported by another source, often a citizen caller.”
Guerin told News & Review that there has only been one successful operational Artificial Intelligence detection by a wildfire camera, and all other cameras need to be watched by people.
“Monitoring multiple video feeds has limitations,” Guerin said.
Best practices require “between 12-24 cameras being monitored for somewhere between 15 minutes and two hours as being the human limit,” according to IPVM, a security technology company.
“Satellites are another topic,” said Guerin. “Their passage over a given area is several times per day, while a human detector watches their viewshed at a minimum every 15 minutes during a day’s shift.”
The Department of Defense, or DOD, has more sensitive satellites that could be used for fire detection, but Guerin detailed that “discussions between USFS and DOD in the past have not resulted in sharing of these data due to classification issues.”
Future development also threatens Lassen National Forest
Another threat to the health of the forest comes from a reversal of the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, also called the Roadless Rule, a protection policy enacted in 2001.
This USFS rule prevents new road construction in national forests and limits commercial logging to areas where roads already exist. The Roadless Rule specifically protects the Mill Creek area of Lassen National Forest, known for its waterfalls, fishing, hiking and recreational activities.
But on June 23, the Trump Administration rescinded the Roadless Rule.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins called the rule “outdated” and said a new policy would end “burdensome barriers that hamper American business and innovation” under the claim of proper forest management.
Fire experts disagree.
“More logging and more roads in national forests are associated with more fires and greater fire intensity,” said Dr. Chad Hanson, a forest and fire ecologist with the John Muir Project, a national forest conservation organization.
Hanson explained that logging changes the microclimate of a forest. Removing trees not only reduces the cooling shade of the canopy cover, it also creates hotter, drier and windier conditions.
“Logging also leaves behind very combustible slash debris, branches, treetops and twigs,” added Hanson, “and spreads highly combustible invasive grasses … It will increase the rate of speed of wildfires, which means wildfires reaching communities faster and that gives people less time to safely evacuate.”
When asked by CN&R if ending the Roadless Rule concurred with proper forest management as Secretary Rollins maintains, Hanson replied, “Based on the science, that is a dangerous falsehood.”
So, is Colby Mountain Lookout Tower finished or has there been a sudden reconsideration?
It won’t be known until after the new year, when the USFS makes its final decision, whether Ken Jordan will be brought back to Colby Mountain for another fire season. He is currently on “unpaid” status and says his annual notification from the USAJOBS application process can come anytime between January and May.
“At West Prospect lookout, north of [Lassen National Park] the guy said maybe he could hire me,” reported Jordan.
“Lookouts and their towers are not sentimental anachronisms,” concluded Michael Guerin, “but useful and cost-effective measures where human beings can work to safeguard rural communities and those that live in them.”
Great piece! Why is the USFS closing the tower just as climate change is making fires worse and more frequent? And then claiming it was due to safety issues when it had just been given a clean bill of health! Let’s find out what the real agenda was.
Upon hiking to the top of Colby mt via the trail from near Jonesville we met Ken Jordan at the lookout who allowed my wife and a friend to come up and check out his view and all the cool equipment used for fire spotting.
He is a local hero and likely the reason Butte Meadows and Jonesville did not burn into oblivion during the PG&E caused, Dixie Fire.
This summer our favorite local NF campground, Cherry Hill just below Jonesville never opened. Every time I called the Almanor Ranger district asking when it would open I received only false answers (lies) the first two times; No campground host came forward (false, I met the former host working as host at Domingo Springs campground and verified that they bever planned to open it) and the second lie repeated over and over was that they were waiting for hazard tree work for PG&E that was to be contracted out and would open upon completion.
I am a retired utility forester that used to contract for PG&E and worked every summer while monitoring the Oro Fino PG&E distribution lines and never once was the campground closed for PG&E work. There is not a single conifer along the PG&E lines that can strike a campsite withon the campground.
The final phone call to the Almanor District near the end of sunmer finally elicited the response I knew to be the truth; The tRump regime were not funding to open many NF campgrounds in our area including Battle Creek campground in Mineral.
Gutting the Forest Service just as the need grows in dangerous and short sighted. Who does not remember tRump standing bext to Sheriff Honea as the orange turd scolded us to rake out forests and refered to our devastated community of Paridise calling it Pleasure three times while Honea barely mustered a correction.
Og course the orange turd only thinks of his personal pleasures, underage girls and cheating at golf but I digress! La Malfa is too little, too late!
Absolutely ridiculous and all due to Trump’s mishandling of everything, including THIS—-Save the Lookout TOWER!!!
This is a deeply concerning investigation that raises critical questions about transparency and due process in our wildfire management. The apparent contradiction between the official “project complete” status and the on-ground reality at Colby Mountain is troubling enough, but the suggestion of a Fire Guardian being removed without clear cause is a serious allegation that undermines trust in the very systems meant to protect us.
Given the significant discrepancies uncovered here, what specific public body or oversight committee (e.g., a Grand Jury, a county Board of Supervisors inquiry) has the authority to formally investigate the decision-making process behind both the lookout’s status and the personnel decision, and compel sworn testimony to get a clear, factual record?