PROTECTION OF FORESTS FRO^[ FIRE 



665 



est. ]\Ierely setting fire to the woods 

 without control is nothing less than for- 

 est destruction. 



FIRE LINES 



Broadly speaking, a fire line is a 

 cleared strip in the forest used as an aid 

 in the protection from fire. It may be a 

 road, a trail, a river or stream, a line 

 cleared especially for a fire break, or a 

 plowed furrow. The purpose of fire 

 lines is to check or stop fires and to 

 facilitate fighting them. A small sur- 

 face fire may be stopped entirely by a 

 road or even a path. Some surface fires 

 are easily checked in their progress by 

 narrow fire lines ; others can be stopped 

 only' by very wide lines. Crown fires 

 and surface fires of unu&ual severity 

 will readily leap across even" very wide 

 fire lines. Fire lines, therefore, should 

 not be built with the idea that they will 

 always stop fires. They are intended to 

 serve primarily as an aid. and often are 

 an indispensable aid, in controlling fires 

 and preventing their spread. Even 

 when they do not actually stop or check 

 a fire they serve as vantage points from 

 which the fighting crew may work. 

 Their establishment usually makes the 

 woods accessible, so that a crew can get 

 to a fire or near it quickly with appli- 

 ances for fighting it. If back-firing is 

 necessary it can often be done best from 

 the fire line. 



Fire lines differ very greatly in con- 

 struction and width, according to local 

 conditions of fire danger and of special 

 forest organization. They will be dis- 

 cussed under the following heads: (i) 

 Roads; (2) trails; (3) special fire lines. 



Roads 



An ordinary dirt road ranks as one 

 of the best of all fire lines. The wider 

 the road the more efifective it is. A for- 

 est well cut up with roads is. therefore, 

 much more easily protected than one 

 with few or no roads. In Europe every 

 well-organized forest has a thoroughly 

 ])lanned network of roads. These are 

 located primaril}- witli reference to the 



problem of logging, but they serve also 

 as a network of fire lines, and special 

 lines are cleared to supplement them 

 where necessary. Every part of the for- 

 est is readily accessible not only for 

 patrolling for fire during the danger 

 season, but for the quick transportation 

 of fire-fighting appliances. In case a 

 fire should start in this forest and be 

 discovered within a reasonable time it 

 would be easy to confine it to a small 

 area. 



We can not expect to have such a 

 well-organized system of roads and fire 

 lines in our forests for a long time, but 

 much can be done in the way of utiliz- 

 ing the more or less temporary roads 

 that are used in logging and afterwards 

 abandoned. This is particularly true in 

 the second-growth woodlots. 



In most woodlots there are a great 

 number of old wood roads, often badly 

 overgrown with weeds, brush, or trees. 

 If these are kept clear they are of great 

 value in fire protection. They make the 

 dififerent parts of the woods accessible 

 and offer points from which the fighting 

 crews may work. The author has in 

 mind a tract in Pennsylvania which was 

 burned over in 1909 with great loss, but 

 which might easily have been saved had 

 the old roads been clear. 



It is usually impracticable, on account 

 of the expense entailed, to keep all the 

 roads free of leaves, grass, etc., but 

 they may be kept brushed out with very 

 little cost. The author recently had 

 some work of this sort done on a Penn- 

 sylvania tract, eight years after aban- 

 donment of the road, for less than $3 

 per mile. It may not always pay to 

 repair bridges and restore badly washed 

 roads, but in almost every second- 

 growth woodlot most of the overgrown 

 roads may be reestablished sufficiently 

 for fire lines witli very little cost. 



Trails 



The first object of trails is to open up 

 a forest and make it accessible for ])a- 

 trol and for fighting fires. In the Na- 

 tional Forests this work of trail con- 

 struction constitutes the first step in 



