Building a 'Fire Organization 



485 



essary will be such measures as law en- 

 forcement, planned personal contacts, 

 and fireproofing of high-hazard rights- 

 of-way and industrial sites. 



Primary responsibility for jobs like 

 these may logically be considered to lie 

 with representatives of State and Fed- 

 eral forestry and conservation agencies 

 and public utilities, industries, and the 

 like. But programs like that put on by 

 the American Red Gross in Sonoma 

 County afford wonderful opportunities 

 for each of us to redeem part of our 

 wildfire responsibilities. 



But only a part. The rest of our wild- 

 fire responsibilities can best be redeemed 



by being careful eternally careful. 



R. F. HAMMATT, a graduate of the 

 Harvard University School of Forestry, 

 worked with the Forest Service from 

 1906 until his retirement in 1946, ex- 

 cept for 10 years as manager of the 

 California Redwood Association. At 

 various times during the 30 years with 

 Forest Service, he served as forest as- 

 sistant, deputy forest supervisor, and 

 forest supervisor of the Shasta National 

 Forest; as chief of occupancy, assistant 

 chief of operations, forest examiner, 

 assistant regional forester, and assistant 

 to the Chief of the Forest Service. 



BUILDING A FIRE ORGANIZATION 



EARL S. PEIRCE, CARL A. GUSTAFSON 



Early discovery of a fire whether 

 in forest or city and speed and 

 strength in attacking it are the corner- 

 stones on which a fire-control organ- 

 ization is built. The structure of the 

 organization itself begins with the fire 

 fighters, but involves much more than 

 that. It includes facilities for detecting 

 and reporting fires, transportation, 

 fire-fighting equipment, the supervisory 

 personnel, and well-trained forces for 

 the initial attack. Comprehensive pre- 

 liminary plans are needed; so are 

 means for carrying them out. 



Because about one-third of the total 

 area of the continental United States is 

 forest land, which requires organized 

 protection against fire and which varies 

 widely in most of the many elements 

 related to forest fires and their control, 

 three prerequisites are necessary to de- 

 velop a forest-fire organization for any 

 particular area : To know the local fire 

 problem, to determine the major ob- 

 jectives that the efforts for protection 

 should reach, and to define the meas- 

 ures needed to attain the desired goal. 



Of approximately 653 million acres 

 of forest lands in the 48 States that 

 need some protection against wildfires, 

 about two-thirds belongs to private 



owners. The other third is publicly 

 owned. All the public land and three- 

 fourths of the private areas are under 

 some degree of fire control, but 107 

 million acres of private forest lands are 

 still without organized protection. 



In 1947, of 80,370 fires on protected 

 lands, 8,928 occurred on Federal prop- 

 erty and 71,442 on areas belonging 

 to States and private owners. Fires 

 burned 318,074 acres, or 0.15 percent, 

 of the area protected on Federal lands, 

 and 2,814,381 acres, or 0.86 percent, 

 on State and private lands. The tan- 

 gible losses were estimated at $2,972,- 

 786 and $21,378,477, respectively. 



We have no reliable comparable 

 figures for the lands without organized 

 protection, but we estimate that about 

 15 percent of those tracts burn over 

 each year. 



In classifying forest fires by causes, 

 eight categories are generally used: 

 Lightning, railroads, campers, smok- 

 ers, debris burners, incendiarists, lum- 

 bering, and miscellaneous. 



Lightning, incendiarists, and smok- 

 ers, in that order, are responsible for 

 most fires on Federal lands. On State 

 and private holdings, the relative ma- 

 jor causes are different, being incen- 



