HOW TELEPHONES SAVED LIVES 



651 



"Telegrams poured in from every 

 part of the United States. They were 

 inquiries from people who had friends 

 out in the forests. These had to be 

 answered. A local paper printed a 

 story about settlers being endangered. 

 A man stumbled into the office, his 

 face blanched.. He could not speak. 

 In his hand he held a copy of that 

 paper. 'My family is there,' he finally 

 gasped. It took a lot of work to reas- 

 sure that man and send him on his way 



agani. 



"Up at Mosquito Ranger's Post, 

 Mrs. Holts, the ranger's wife with her 

 children were hemmed in by the flames. 

 For a while we thought them burned. 

 But finally they got out alive. But it 

 would be hard to picture the grief and 

 the worry that attended all these 

 things. 



"There were so many reports of 

 lives endangered, lives lost, settlers, 

 fire-fighters and hunters hemmed in by 

 the flames, that we never knew what to 

 believe. It was such a time as a man 

 never forgets. 



THE fires' lesson 



"Now that the danger is past, we 

 who fought the fires are left with cer- 

 tain conclusions concerning the way in 

 which the situation must be handled 

 another time. 



"There must, in the first place, be 

 better fire protection. More rangers 

 are needed. This not alone for the 

 southern Oregon country. No one can 

 tell where the fire will be worst next 

 year. 



"Crater national forest has an area 

 of over 1,000,000 acres. At the time 

 the fires broke out there were between 

 25 and 30 rangers for the whole vast 

 area. There should at least be a 



ranger for each township of 36 sec- 

 tions. There should be more complete 

 provisions for the reporting of fires. 

 The telephone service, such as we had, 

 undoubtedly was the agent of preser- 

 vation from double the destruction re- 

 corded. But there should be at least 

 250 miles more of telephone lines. This 

 costs $60 a mile — cheap compared to 

 the value of the service. 



"The most essential thing in forest 

 fire fighting is getting men on the 

 ground. Ten men to handle the blaze 

 in its incipiency are worth more than 

 200 after the flames gain headway. 



"And, of course, the great thing in 

 preventing destruction of forests by 

 fires is precaution. Campers and 

 hunters set most of the blazes. There 

 seem to be indications in southern 

 Oregon that some of the forest fires 

 were purposely set. Some of them or- 

 iginated in slashings. But the people 

 tell me that when they have learned 

 of a hunter or a camper moving from 

 their vicinity they go to look at the 

 site of his camp, and, ten chances to 

 one, they will find embers, which if 

 caught up by the wind constitute the 

 beginning of an uncontrollable fire." 



Assistant District Forester Buck is 

 accredited by the people on the ground 

 who watched his work and by others 

 who know of the menace of the fires 

 with having given an almost super- 

 human service in preventing greater 

 destruction. It was a time when a 

 man needed to keep his head cool and 

 his mind working rapidly. Order 

 needed to be worked out of confusion. 

 This the assistant district forester did. 

 Had it not been for his work un- 

 doubtedly the timber loss, great as it 

 is, would have been doubled. 



