FIRE RISK IN MASSACHUSETTS 

 By H. O. Cook^ 



We have so long emphasized the forest fire risk in this country 

 that I believe we have blinded ourselves to certain facts concern- 

 ing the danger to forest property, and under some circumstances 

 unduly exaggerated it. It has seemed to me that the principal fire 

 risks in our more densely-populated commonwealths are limited to 

 certain sections and that there is a great difference in the average 

 fire risk as between sections of the states. I have held the theory 

 that in a State like Massachusetts the principal fire risks were 

 confined to a belt of land about one eighth mile wide on either 

 side of the railroad right of way for reasons that are obvious, 

 and to the vicinity of manufacturing communities where there is a 

 more or less irresponsible population which on Sundays and holi- 

 days spreads out into the surrounding woodlands and carelessly 

 sets many fires. Acting upon this hypothesis, I have taken our 

 forest fire data for 1914 in an endeavor to see whether my theory 

 is correct, although in order to make a really satisfactory test of 

 this matter one should take the data for a series of years. I am 

 free to confess that, although the results of this investigation bear 

 out my theory, it does not do so to such an emphatic degree as I 

 expected. 



We have in Massachusetts 253 cities and towns with a total area 

 of 5,321,000 acres. I have picked out 73 communities, including 21 

 cities, which have a distinctly manufacturing population. Four- 

 teen cities were left out because they have no forest land and con- 

 sequently no forest fires. I do not mean to imply that none of the 

 remaining 280 communities have no manufacturing industries, but 

 that their industrial population is not a large factor in the town. 

 In comparing these two groups of communities we have used the 

 non-railroad fires only, assuming, as we have a right to, that a 

 great part of these are due to the direct carelessness of the popu- 

 lation itself. We find that 73 industrial communities (20% of the 

 towns), having 25 per cent of the total area, had 33 per cent of the 

 fires of the year 1914 both in area and number, while 80 per cent 

 of the towns, largely rural or residential, had but two thirds of the 

 fires. My original idea was that the disproportion should be 



^Assistant State Forester, Massachusetts. 

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