Mt. Ord fire lookout tower to be decommissioned

[chumley]

I just read an article written by an ASU student in an ASU/Slate/New America Foundation collaboration that is very interesting reading. A fair-use snippet:

In Arizona’s Tonto National Forest, Mount Ord will soon be home to a 355-degree rotating camera that sends a feed to a dispatch center in Phoenix, 50 miles southwest of the mountain. The camera will cost about $700 and should be installed by the end of this wildfire season, said Tonto deputy fire manager Helen Graham.

Graham declined to discuss specific staffing details, but Mount Ord lookout Robert Brownell, who has been a lookout in various locations around the country since 1994, said he expects to be out of a job. Cutting his position should make up for the cost of the camera in no more than a couple of weeks.

Those savings are the upside of this trend. The downside is the death of an American icon. Lookouts are more than government employees. They represent the independence that Americans want to see in themselves.

Read the whole article here:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technolog ... ology.html

[beterarcher]

[CannondaleKid]

355-degree rotating camera

Was it too much to expect a full 360 degrees? :whistle:
My guess is it has less to do with the camera and more to do with the location... with the massive communication towers blocking 5 degrees of the view to the east of the fire observation tower.
Either way, what happens if there's a fire in that missing 5 degrees? Rely on wind to blow the smoke into the visible arc?

Speaking to the job loss... As sad as it may be for the lookout out of a job, if the camera cost will be paid for within a few weeks (the pay for the human lookout) I'd have to say I agree with the savings.

I just wish more branches of our government would do the same thing... if we replaced every Senator & Representative with a robot we'd get more work done for a LOT less than the wages/benefits/retirement of the Congressman, let alone the massive staffs they have.
And how do you pay off a robot? Awwww, too bad for those high paid lobbyists, they'd be out of work too.

Oh, but think of all the job losses!! I think we can survive just fine with less dead weight in government...
(I suppose I should be more careful with the specific the words I choose, what with the NSA scanning everything that passes through their filters, which probably includes all these subversive posts on HAZ)

Ok, off the :SB:

[kingsnake]

They already are robots. Have you not watched "They LIve!"?