Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 288, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1913 — FIGHTING A FOREST FIRE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FIGHTING A FOREST FIRE

OREST fires! There is something awe-inspiring and terrible in the very || t thought of them. You may never |B* have traveled hours, on a railw’ay jl train, through the choking smoke. ||T A you may never have seen the light JL- jof a blazing forest. Yet, though you have not come as near as this to a W / forest fire, the words carry a feeling Y y of danger and of tremendous might rff—J for evil. It is hard for the average layman to

realize how fires Can assume such magnitude in territory supposed to be under supervision of men appointed for the particular purpose of preventing fires, but the fact is quite readily comprehended by those who have had occasion to travel through some of the remote and inaccessible regions within

the national forests. As a matter of fact, the lands withdrawn as national forests are almost entirely of a rugged, mountainous nature. Necessarily, there are large and comparatively open portions included, particularly in the range country, but instances point to the fact that the sections subject to the most severe—fires are invariably those of the most rugged and inaccessible nature, made up of high, steep mountains, covered with a dense forest and heavy •underbrush. Many places are, in their present condition, practically impenetrable; and while

they are being opened rapidly as funds will permit of trails being built,, yet there is so much area, so many other duties are required of the forest officers and the funds mentioned are so limited and inadequate, that progress of such work, while keeping pace with the available resources, is necessarily slow. Before enlarging upon conditions under which large fires begin, it might be well to mention brieflj a few *>f the forest fire terms with which the layman frequently meets and may not understand. Forest fires are classified generally as crown or top fires —those where the fire travels through the tops of the trees with surprising rapidity and working disastrous results; and ground or surface fires, where the fire travels along the ground, consuming soil covers or humus, brush and litter, seedlings and often small trees, and, consequently, doing little or no damage to mature timber. Luckily, in most cases forest fires are ground fires and it is these that are the most quickly controlled. Yet a single top fire can cause vastly more damage than a great ' pumber of ground fires. However, it is generally under unusual conditions that crown or .top fires occur —such as high winds, very bushy or steep country and severe drought, when such conditions can in an incredibly short time change a creeping ground fire into a sweeping crown fire, leaving a path of ruin and often death in its wake. In brief, drought and wind are the two dominant conditions favorable to severe fires. The wind is always the most dreaded factor during the tire season, its freakishness and uncertainty upsetting the best of plans. So fierce was the wind at the time of the destructive fires of 1910 that whole hillsides of timber were uprooted and men were forced out of their saddles. The fire leaped across rivers half a mile wide at a single bound, traveling nearly a mile a min,ute at times and devouring everything in Its path. Often wide canyons were spanned as by a great Jump, the fire continuing on the opposite sid» and leaving the canyon timber green pnd unharmed. Numerous Instances of the absolute freakishness of the fire could be cited, pnd all teed to shew its very uncertainty. ' In fighting a fire there is constructed around the burning area what is called a fire line or •trench. This consists of clearing away all debris and brush, generally for three, or four feet, though wider when conditions allow or warrant It, and exposing the mineral soil for one or two feet or wider as necessary. An ordinary ground fire, unfanned by a strong wind, will die out on rea r hlng the strip of mineral soil, often as 1 effectually a« If the line were a stream of water. When the fire Is moving slowly and men can stand the heat and smoke, it is always desirable to build the trench close to the fire so as to prevent Its gaining momentum as It progresses; but where the fire Is traveling quite rapidly, often the fire line has to be placed some distance awav from the fire, and where adequate patrol or supervision Is assured the burned material on the Inside of the line Is fired In order to meet the advancing fire and destroy the Inflammable material in its path. Backfiring, aa this Is called, Is generally used only in an emergency ar\? by experienced hands. Often, of pours». whore the fire is severe, strips of timber

for variable distances are ( cleared, but in the ordinary ground fire such work Is usually too slow and unnecessary. The best tools used by a fire-fighting crew in the mountains are axes, shovels and mattocks or grub hoeS, the hoes being usually in greatest proportion and most effective. Often one or two crosscut saws are useful, particularly where the fire Is traveling through a lot of down timber. The axmen generally go first* -clearing out and cutting away the heavy stuff along the line: then follow the grub hoe or mattock men, breaking through the heavy sod and roots; and last the shovel men, who clean out the trail, or, as might be stated, put the finishing touches on the work of the others. The amount of work a gang of men can do depends upon various circumstances, such as the nature of the country, tools available, etc., but roughly it might be said that a gang of twenty men can build a mile of line a day. Aside from a few general there are no set rules for fighting forest fires —in fact, it is far from a black-and-white proposition. Rather, it calls into play initiative and headwork, and the result attained bears mute evidence of the success or failure of the supervising officer, although always it must be» remembered that that uncertain and uncontrollable factor, the wind, can snatch victory from the hands of man so quickly and easily as to make it seem sometimes a veritable mockery of his efforts. And, too, the unbelievable action of fire, even when apparently under control, makes it absolutely necessary that it be watched closely and continuously until there is not a single remaining vestige of its existence. 1 Among the principal causes of forest fires are locomotive sparks, lightning, camp fires left unextingulshed, burning of slash In clearing land, logging operations—principally from fire ip the resultant slash accumulated by the average logger In cutting over an area. There are minor other ways, such as Incendiarism, ashes from a pipe, a lighted cigar or cigarette stub or lighted match cast thoughtlessly aside. The first three mentioned, however, are the most general. When a fire has once assumed the proportions of a fire, ft is generally inadvisable to attempt to check It; rather. It is good judgment to consider the safety of the fire fighters themselves, so that they may be In readiness to attack the fire when It again leaves the tops of the trees and assumes Its slower progress along the ground. It might be mentioned right here that forest fires, with particular reference to ground fires, do not always destroy standing timber, but often only the very small trees, brush and surface* cover or humiiß. Potential timber, of course, has a distinct value, and the destruction of a good soil cover Is a decided detriment to the forest, but many trees, such as Douglas fir, tamarack and yellow pine, haive a thick, heavy bark which forms a good resistance to fire and will often withstand periodic ground fires for years. Other trees with thin bark, of course, succumb quite readily. In the leport of the secretary of agriculture, embodied 'n the Yearbook of the department of agriculture for 1911, he states that "the fires of the calendar year 1910 covered more than 3,000,-

000 acres of government timberland and 800,000 acres of private timberland within the national o forest boundaries, and inflicted daqpage to national forest timber, including youhg growth, estimated at a little less than $25,000,000. The loss In timber destroyed or damaged was slightly over 6,500,000,000 feet ... In fighting the fires, special expenditures were incurred besides the cost in time of the regular protective force." In addition to this, there was an added toll of 74 human lives lost in fighting the fires and a large number injured, to say nothing of many ranchers, settlers, prospectors, etc., who perished. Altogether, it certainly puts the fire season of 1910 down as one of the country's great catastrophes, to be listed with the great Hinckly fire in Minnesota in 1894, which did such devastation. One watches quite breathlessly a serious conflagration in a

city and admires the fearless and systematic work of the firemen fighting to subdue the flames. Here they are but minutes away from the source of the fire, with speedy conveyances for reaching it and every possible assistance of human ingenuity to control the fire. Compare this with the many obstacles with which the forest fire-fighter has to contend. Sometimes he is more than a day’s journey from the fire. He has a limited and often inexperienced crew to help him. He must travel on foot or on horseback, and he cannot lope along as they do in the city parks —mountain trails are not made for loping horses. He must rely on packhorses for conveying commissary supplies, because it may mean many days of hard work ahead of him on the burning area. Very often, indeed, he must blaze his way a number of miles through a trailless wilderness, carrying his bed and grub on his back, and through a country where every step seems a greater impediment to rapid progress; and when he reaches the fire it may be of such proportions as to appall a less sturdy nature. The rapidity with which fire can spread in the mountains is almost unbelievable. For instance, in 1910, by the middle of August over 3,000 small fires had been put out by patrolmen and over 90 large ones had been brought under control by crews of from 25 to 150 men. And yet. when the cyclone of August 20 came, that work was all undone so quickly as to make one gasp with wonder and awe. Within 48 hours a strip of country more than 100 miles long and more than 25 miles wide had been burned over. And still the fire was advancing. Against all this an army of more than 3,000 men fought persistently and courageously and always in the face of overwhelming odds, yet never did they falter until the rains came. In passing, it is but fitting to give credit to the brave men in the government’s employ, who risked and lost their lives in earnest endeavors to carry out their duties, and many are the tales of heroism and unselfish devotion during those strenuous times, when men toiled and sweated shoulder to shoulder. Men can and will, in the course of time, make effort to reforest the great devastated areas, but the scope of years to carry out, such work is broad indeed. Man’s best work, now and for always, lies in the prevention „of a recurrence of such calamities as have gone before. Through legislation man can compel the railroads to up# contrivances to prevent sparks from leaving-the engines; he can educate campers into the necessity for their co-operation in extinguishing camp fires (a truly little thing, yet big in results! and exact a severe penalty for failure to abide by the law; he ocan appropriate more mppey for Improvement and protection work, to place the forests under closer supervision anq make them more accessible, so that the fires caused by lightning, for instance, can be caught at their very inception; but mostly, he must enlist the cooperation of all his fellowmetj to help in the great work of preserving and perpetuating the forestß because they represent a source of wealth and necessity and beauty, not to any single individual but one In which every member of our great country Is, and always will be. directly, or indirectly, a participant, even unto our children’* children, ad tnAnltutn.