No Patrol — A Damaging Fire. 



THIS FIRE WAS IN A REGION WHERE THERE ARE NO LOOKOUT STATIONS AND IT WAS NOT DISCOVERED 

 UNTIL IT HAD REACHED A WIDE EXTENT AND CAUSED GREAT DAMAGE. 



NUMEROUS FOREST FIRES 



DURING June the newspapers 

 had reports in ahnost every 

 issue of forest fires in one sec- 

 tion of the country or the 

 •other, and a hst of these reports would 

 fill several pages of American For- 

 estry. It promises to be a bad fire 

 season, the weather conditions being 

 such that the fires start readily and 

 spread rapidly. 



Fortunately the reports to date are 

 that no very great losses have been 

 caused by any single fire, although the 

 aggregate loss will reach a large sum. 

 Also, the newspaper reports in many 

 ■cases have, doubtless without any in- 

 tention of doing so, exaggerated the 

 importance of the fires, for advices have 

 been received by the American For- 

 estry Association that a number of 

 them have been on l)rush land and 

 through slash and that the actual dam- 

 age to standing timber was compara- 

 tively small in these cases. 



Nevertheless, the damage will reach 

 a considerable figure, and these fires 

 again emphasize the necessity for in- 

 creased fire preventive measures, con- 

 tinual education of the public as to the 

 need of taking infinite precautions to 

 prevent fires, and the value of leaving 



516 



forests in which timber has been cut in 

 such a condition that the danger of fire 

 is reduced to a minimum. All of this is 

 part of the work which the American 

 Forestry Association is doing. 



The losses so far this fire season 

 would have been very much greater had 

 it not been for the effective work of 

 the various fire protective associations, 

 of the Forest Service and the State 

 Forestry departments. These with their 

 well-organized patrol and lookout work 

 have been able to detect numerous fires 

 before they managed to get a good 

 start and to fight them with forces of 

 trained fire fighters. 



So numerous have been the fires and 

 so difficult is it to obtain accurate esti- 

 mates of the losses that definite an- 

 nouncement of all of the damage done, 

 the extent of the fires, and the causes 

 cannot be made until the fire season is 

 ended. 



More than one hundred forest fires 

 occurred during May in the national 

 forest areas of the southern Appa- 

 lachians, coincident with one of the 

 severest spring droughts ever known in 

 the southeast. The statements are 

 based on reports of the weather bureau 

 and the forest service. 



