HOW THE FIRES WERE FOUGHT 



633 



but were reached and quickly put out 

 or trenched and brought under control 

 before attaining serious proportions or 

 doing any large amount of damage. 

 The point is that these; fires were dis- 

 covered and reached very shortly after 

 they started, and were,; therefore, con- 

 trolled with comparative ease. 



DIFFICULTY OF FIRE CONTROL 



Fire control in such a territory, how- 

 ever, as the dense forests of western 

 Montana and northern Idaho, is a most 

 serious and difficult problem. All the 

 big fires of this year occurred in this 

 type of country, for very obvious rea- 

 sons — the density and unbroken char- 

 acter of the timbered areas and the ex- 

 treme difficulty and in many instances 

 impossibility of getting to the fires when 

 they were small. 



There is only one way to meet this 

 problem with any degree of success, and 

 that is by increased patrol in the heavily 

 timbered areas, with means of rapid 

 transportation and communication in 

 the form of trails and telephone lines. 

 Fires must be discovered when they are 

 small. Discovery, however, is but one 

 factor, and although a most important 

 one, it availeth little ifj after a fire is 

 discovered it is impossible on account 

 of inadequate transportation facilities 

 to get to it. This is exactly what oc- 

 curred during the past season. Many 

 fires were discovered by patrolmen, but 

 before even they themselves could get 

 to them assumed proportions which 

 made a large crew and an organized 

 fire camp necessary 



In many cases twenty or thirty miles 

 of trail had to be cut before supplies 

 and men could be put in to check the 

 fire. Five miles per day is a high aver- 

 age for trail work, which in country of 

 this character is the very roughest kind. 

 The only available means of transporta- 

 tion is by means of pack horses, and in 

 order to use even this method trails are 

 absolutely essential. 



Only one other known method can be 

 used, to pack the supplies and equip- 

 ment on man-back, but here, too, trails 

 must be harl. Tt is possible, of course. 



for a man to meander his way through 

 the brush and windfalls with a 30 or 35 

 pound pack on his back, but when a 

 number of the large mountain fires are 

 15 to 100 miles distant from railroads, 

 and in many cases without trails, a man 

 cannot be expected to make his way by 

 hard work through the tangle of brush 

 and dense forest at the rate of 10 or 15 

 miles a day and then be ready to fight 

 fire when he reaches the scene of action. 

 He is too badly in need of a rest before 

 tackling the hard trenching work on a 

 fire. Fresh men must be had in order 

 to be effective. With a comprehensive, 

 well-coordinated system of trails and 

 telephone lines this can be accom- 

 plished. 



THE PROTECTIVE FORCE 



Each National Forest under the juris- 

 diction of a Forest Supervisor, with his 

 Deputy and Forest Rangers and Forest 

 Guards, is a unit of 1,000,000 or more 

 acres, in some cases more than 2,000,- 

 000 acres. This means a tract of land 

 about 75 miles long by 40 to 50 miles 

 in width, or from 1,800 to 3,500 square 

 miles. The country is rough and moun- 

 tainous and hard to travel over. 



An adequate patrol force for the 

 heavily timbered forests should contain 

 at least one man to every 30,000 acres. 

 On the more lightly timbered forests 

 east of the divide one man to every 

 50,000 or 60,000 acres has proved suffi- 

 cient. To patrol this area good look- 

 out points on the prominent peaks are 

 selected, from which it is possible to see 

 a large scope of country. Trails along 

 open ridges are used wherever possible 

 in connection with these look-out points. 



Another important part of the pro- 

 tective work is the patrol of trails fre- 

 quented by campers and hunters. Con- 

 stant patrol during the dry season along 

 the rights-of-way of railroads travers- 

 ing the forests is one of the most impor- 

 tant features of this work. 



EQUIPMENT REQUIRED 



With a well-distributed patrol force 

 and a coordinated system of trails and 

 telephone lines, the question of location 

 and control is largely covered with one 



