McKinney Fire: Forest Service fire lookout killed after staying home while flames grew
A longtime U.S. Forest Service fire lookout — who spent decades scanning the Klamath National Forest for puffs of smoke and the next threat to communities near the California-Oregon line — died when she ignored advice to flee the McKinney Fire and the blaze overtook her home, the federal agency announced Monday.
Kathy Shoopman, 73, died at her Klamath River home during the blaze, which exploded in late July into the state’s largest conflagration of 2022 while decimating the community of Klamath River. The Forest Service said she was among the four people who died in the fire; the names of the other three have not been released, pending positive identification and notification of their next of kin by authorities.
The exact circumstances of her death were unclear, but she appeared to shake off warnings about the advancing flames. Rachel Smith, the Klamath National Forest supervisor, said during a briefing Monday morning posted by the Yreka News that her death had come after she had been told to leave.
“She had a home there that she’d stayed in for 50 years, and when she was asked to evacuate that first Friday night, she just said she’d be more comfortable staying,” Smith said during the briefing. Smith declined to answer further questions about the circumstances of Shoopman’s death.
Several Klamath River residents who initially took a wait-and-see approach to the fire said they had only minutes to flee as gusty thunderstorms supercharged the firestorm, creating a tornado of embers, smoke and flame. In one day, the McKinney Fire killed more people — four — than all of California’s fires last year.
Two people burned to death together at the end of their driveway when their vehicle became trapped on a small embankment just feet away from their front gate, said Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue. The gate was never opened, and there were signs that it had been hit by a vehicle trying to leave the property along Doggett Creek Road.
“We know the fire came really fast,” Smith said in an Monday interview with the Bay Area News Group. “We hit a very significant weather change, and the fire exploded. And so the residents there didn’t have much time.”
Shoopman lived in the community of Klamath River along the Highway 96 corridor for nearly 50 years, meaning that her home was among the many under her watch. She worked in mountaintop perches across the Klamath National Forest, spotting fires when they first ignited and radioing down to firefighters about where to snuff them out.
A former elementary school teacher, Shoopman started her lookout career in 1974 at the Baldy Mountain Lookout, west of the community of Happy Camp. In 1993, she transitioned to the Buckhorn Lookout, about four miles north of the Klamath River community. Often accompanied by a dog or a pet cat named Kitty, she worked there until her death on July 29.
She was not on duty when the McKinney Fire ignited, officials said. The fire lookout where she was often stationed — a tall wooden terrace — survived the fire.
Her career was spent working in a forest renowned for its trailblazing women. The first woman ever to work as a Forest Service fire lookout, Hallie Daggett, logged her opening shift in 1913 overseeing the same Klamath National Forest.
“There’s a long history, and a long line, of women who have served as lookouts on the Klamath, back to the very first one,” said Patty Grantham, who retired as Klamath National Forest’s supervisor last year. Lookouts, such as Shoopman, are “the great lifeline that’s out there. She was one of those people who just knew the place with her eyes closed.”
Shoopman also ranked among the holdouts of a profession that’s become increasingly endangered in recent years, as government agencies increasingly turn to stationary cameras, airplane flights and even satellites to spot new fire starts.
At their peak use in the 1930s to 1950s, roughly 8,000 fire lookout towers stood watch over forests across the nation — a figure that’s since dwindled to about 3,000, said Brad Eells, chairman of the Forest Fire Lookout Association. Only a fraction of those towers — maybe 10% — are actually staffed.
Longtime forest managers say their loss is felt on a daily basis. Not only do fire lookouts sit in quiet solitude watching for the first wisps of smoke to appear over the landscape, they also take weather readings and serve as their own radio relay stations. Often, firefighters or search-and-rescue crews will work in steep ravines that leave them out of communication with emergency dispatchers — leaving fire lookouts as critical go-betweens able to reach both parties at once.
Shoopman did it all — often with that same soft, gravelly voice that seemed made to be broadcast over a radio, Smith said in the interview.
“We more think of her for the fires you’ll never hear about — the fires that were caught so fast and so early that they never had a name,” Smith said. “That’s her real talent — it was helping us avoid fires that turn into large fires simply by very precise and timely reporting.”
Crews were still working Monday to contain the McKinney Fire, which had burned 60,379 acres and destroyed 87 homes and 45 other structures, according to Cal Fire. The blaze stood at 40% containment Monday while burning in rugged terrain west of the tourist haven of Yreka.
The McKinney Fire wasn’t the first time that Shoopman had been told to flee an advancing wildfire, said Valerie Linfoot, a friend and fellow Klamath River resident whose husband worked with Shoopman for decades. Several years ago, she stayed home during another blaze that spared her house, despite burning perilously close to it.
On Monday, Linfoot lamented that Shoopman died in a place she had worked her life to protect.
“Kathy was one of those furiously independent people who had her own way of living, and she took care of herself, and she was living her life,” Linfoot said. “She was very talented in what she did. And she protected our forests for a very, very long time.”
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