By day, Tom Hawks is a foreman for grain warehouses in the southeast corner of Washington state. But he also serves as a volunteer fire chief. Without receiving any reimbursement of expenses, Hawks uses his airplane to do both jobs better.

Hawks has worked for 34 years as a foreman for the warehouses, owned by the Columbia County Grain Growers cooperative.

Hawks, who grew up on a wheat farm nearby, is responsible for receiving, segregating, and selecting the harvested grain that farmers bring to the cooperative’s storehouses. He and his team visit six of the 12 facilities that lie in the county’s northern half and examine paperwork, weigh trucks that come in, and take samples to assess the grain’s quality.

They break down the samples into sub-samples that are graded by the state. Whatever grain the farmers’ combines did not clean thoroughly—maybe too much chaff or straw got in, for example—is less desirable and is docked from the total.

Harvest season runs six weeks to two months, depending on the rainfall. Before harvest time, the cooperative mails survey cards that ask the farmers how many acres of each crop they’re farming, the amount they plan to transport by barge from the nearby Snake River and how much they will store in the grain elevators. That method is not very precise, so Hawks drives around the area to get a better idea.

And, before the harvest, Hawks takes up his Cessna 172 for an hour over the fields to get a better sense of what awaits. When the grain is thick, he expects a bountiful crop; lots of dirt among the rows of grain means a lower yield because the crop is thinner.

The goal, Hawks said, is to get “an idea of how much grain is still to come in to that facility.” He then compares that figure with the bushels of warehouse space remaining.

“You can drive around and get an idea how thick [the crop] is, but not always, because of the hills. But when you fly, you can see the bald spots and how thick it is,” Hawks explained.

“Harvests start out slow and ramp up as farmers start cutting. When you get up there and see how much is left, you can see when [production will] tail off. As it slows down, the farmers who cut first may be selling it and will barge it. That will make room in the warehouse.”

Hawks has employed airborne surveillance since getting his pilot certificate eight years ago. Flying, he said, “is something I’ve always wanted to do.”

Aviation also provides Hawks insight for improving firefighting in his volunteer corps. Airborne, he looks for roads that access hilltops and water sources. After a fire, he takes aerial photographs. “If it’s a very big fire, we’ll study them to see what we did well and what we could do better next time,” he said.

One important advantage of flying above the fields is the perspective offered on where to establish fireguards—the purposeful setting of a fire so that it blows into the teeth of an approaching fire, slows it down, and limits its spread.

“We might, looking over the terrain, which you can’t always see ahead of time, look for a different location to build a fireguard and backfire it away from the road,” Hawks said.

Flying, while “not necessary” for either firefighting-planning or crop-estimation purposes, Hawks said, “is one way for me to assess what I do.” —By Hillel Kuttler