FOEEST SERVICE. 176 



control. But where the country is still an utter wilderness, with 

 scanty means of communication, no local population, and supply 

 centers far away, quick action to put out fires before they gain head- 

 way is very difficult and the fighting of large fires very expensive. 

 War conditions have introduced new elements into the situation and 

 have increased the need for a restudy of .the whole problem. 



A disproportionately large fraction of the fire-fighting funds is 

 spent on a few heavily timbered Forests in Montana, Idaho, Wash- 

 ington, and Oregon. The country is very rugged and mountainous, 

 the number of lightning-set fires high, the climatic conditions such 

 as to produce frequent seasons of great exposure to fires, and the 

 character of the timber-growth favorable to their wide spread. Un- 

 checked, fires in these Forests would do enormous damage. The Na- 

 tional Forests in these four States have 37 per cent of the entire 

 National Forest acreage, and 52 per cent 'of all the merchantable tim- 

 ber; but their fire-fighting costs in the four bad years 1910, 1914, 

 1915, and 1917 were 83 per cent of the total for all the Forests. Of 

 this 83 per cent, four-fifths was expended on 20 of the 65 Forests 

 in the four States, and two-fifths on a group of 7 adjacent Forests in 

 which the situation is especially difficult. 



These disproportionate expenditures are due chiefly to the fre- 

 quenc}' with which the fires reach so great a size that scores or hun- 

 dreds of men must be gathered, transported, equipped, and main- 

 tained for days and even weeks on the fire lines, far within the 

 Forests. The greatest fire hazard is in northern Idaho and western 

 Montana, where immense resources remote from transportation and 

 not now in demand are being held and protected for future use in the 

 industries and development of the country. Here we still have 

 almost a wilderness, with very few settlers in the forested areas and 

 few men employed except in the lumbering and mining activities 

 close to lines of transportation. There are wagon roads into only 

 a very small proportion of the area and the system of trails is as yet 

 incomplete. 



This means that in the event of a forest fire too large to be success- 

 fully handled by the fire patrolmen stationed in the district, help can 

 be secured only from distant points, and equipment and supplies 

 must be packed in to the vicinity of the fire. Under such conditions 

 the shortest time in which an adequate crew with equipment and sup- 

 plies can be secured and got on the ground may be from five to seven 

 days. By that time the fire may have spread, w^ith unfavorable 

 weather conditions, to such proportions that second and third calls 

 for help are necessarj' before it can be brought under control. 



Also, the incomplete system of roads and trails greatly increases 

 the difficulty of quick movement when changes in the point of attack 

 become necessary, and the lack of such facilities is often mainly re- 

 sponsible for inability to extinguish fires quickl}^ and for a consequent 

 large property loss. 



The recruiting of large forces of fire fighters necessarily takes labor 

 from productive industries, and their maintenance involves the con- 

 sumption of supplies thus withdrawn from other use. As the war 

 goes on it becomes more and more important to conserve both labor 

 and supplies. War wages and war prices also heavily increase the 

 Government's fire-fighting bills. It Was difficult last summer to get 



