A NATIONAL PLAN FOR AMERICAN FORESTRY 1407 



ization of a thousand men for a week's battle. Above all else a fire- 

 control organization requires skilled and trained leadership of a 

 high degree of executive and managerial capacity. This highly 

 trained organization requires definite physical things if it is to func- 

 tion properly. It needs for prevention, educational equipment; for 

 detection, lookout structures; for communication, a telephone sys- 

 tem; for moving its first line of defense, a road and trail system, ade- 

 quate transportation, and a supply of carefully selected and in part 

 specially designed equipment; for its second line of defense in isolated 

 regions, supply depots with immense stores of tools, food supplies, 

 equipment, pack stock, bedding, cooking outfits, and trucks. 



In forest-fire fighting the plan of organization must provide for the 

 peak year and for the unusual month or day when adverse weather 

 whips fires with fury before it. A year or even a 5-year period may 

 pass by during which even an undermanned or poorly equipped 

 organization can hold fire in check and within the objective of fire 

 control. But the test comes in these occasional bad fire days or the 

 critical fire years when the work of many decades in the protection of 

 the property may be wiped out. Thus protection must be planned for 

 at least the average critical year. 



The basic needs for adequate fire control may be summarized as : 

 1. Comprehensive fire-prevention programs designed to create 

 positive interest and active support on the part of the piiblic. 

 ^ 2. State laws, providing direct State responsibility for the protec- 

 tion of State and private forest lands. 



3. Local, State and Federal fire police regulations and laws. 



4. Continuing appropriations for capital investments in trans- 

 portation, detection, and communication system until an adequate 

 layout is provided. 



5. Annual appropriations for annual carrying charges to provide 

 capable executives, trained personnel, equipment, and labor for 

 suppressing fires. 



PRESENT EXPENDITURES FOR FIRE CONTROL 



Inherent regional differences, such as the character of the forest, 

 the terrain, the severity of fire weather, and the local public attitude 

 toward forest property go far toward determining the total expendi- 

 tures for fire control, but great differences in per-acre expenditures are 

 evident in regions of closely similar fire danger and equal forest values. 

 These differences in current expenditures have in many cases slight 

 relationship to the needs of the job, but often reflect either lack of 

 interest of the State and private owner in the necessity for fire control 

 or their financial incapacity to meet it. 



In table 8 are given the current average annual expenditures in fire 

 control by major regions, for all lands in State or private ownership. 

 The expenditures per acre were calculated by charging the total 

 expenditures against the total area needing protection, although in 

 some regions, particularly the Central and South, millions of acres are 

 receiving no protection. 



