174 ANNUAL REPORTS OP DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Table 5. — Fires on National Forests, calendar year 1916. 



Extent tod cause of fire. 



Number 

 of fires. 



Percentage 

 of total. 



Area burned over: 



Under 0.25 acre 



Between 0.25 and 10 acres 



10 acres and over; damage under $100.. . 

 10 acres and over; damage SlOO to $1,000 

 10 acres and over; damage over $1,000... 



Total 



Cause of fire: 



Railroads 



Lightning 



Incendiaries 



Brush burning 



Campers 



Lumbering 



Unkno\vn 



Miscellaneous 



Total 



2,634 



1, 199 



1,272 



193 



57 



46.58 



26.51 



22.49 



3.41 



1.01 



5,655 



100.00 



In the calendar year 1917 the fire situation was, on tlie whole, 

 exceptionally favorable until near the end of June. The eastern 

 Forests came through the danger season, which in the South is in 

 the winter and early spring and in the North opens correspondingly 

 later, extending well into or through June in the White Mountains, 

 without serious fires and with conditions on the whole normal or 

 better. In the Southwest, where the main danger is in the spring 

 and early summer, the situation was more favorable than usual on 

 June 1, but grew rapidly worse until early July, when rains brought 

 the fire season to a close. One very large and dangerous fire on the 

 Chiricahua division of the Corona do National Forest, in Arizona, 

 was put under control only after heavy expenditures. In Michigan 

 and Minnesota the spring was very dry and the fire season corre- 

 spondingly bad. In California a few days of excessive heat about 

 the middle of June brought a sudden emergency and many fires, the 

 worst of which were in the southern part of the State. At the close 

 of the fiscal year the general situation throughout the West was 

 about normal. 



The remainder of the summer put the National Forest protective 

 system to the severest test which it has experienced since the great 

 fires of 1910, and made necessary the heaviest emergency expendi- 

 tures which have been known since that disastrous year. Had it not 

 been for the great advance which has been made in organized fire 

 protection in the interval, there might easily have been a repetition 

 of the widespread losses which were then suffered. The hardest 

 part of the fight against the fires was taken by district 1, embracing 

 Montana and northern Idaho — the same region which suffered most 

 severely in 1910. In Oregon and Washington the danger was not 

 much less, but the fires on ithe National Forests were less extensive. 

 Late in August the emergency expenditures for fire fighting in dis- 

 trict 1 were for a time about $15,000 a day. Before the fall rains 

 brought the fire season in the Northwest to a close the emergency 

 outlay since the beginning of the current fiscal year had reached a 



