5 02 



Yearbook of Agriculture 1949 



machines could not reach. Fifty ad- 

 ditional men could be used to advan- 

 tage during the evening and early night 

 to strengthen the crews now under way. 

 Fortunately, both the logging and road 

 crews had several men who could 

 pinch-hit as squad leaders, or straw- 

 bosses. Given an even break, the fire 

 should be flanked on both the Ant 

 Creek and Fly Greek sides by night. 

 If the plans worked, tomorrow's job 

 should be principally to squelch the 

 fire completely, to mop up along the 

 backfire lines, and to clean up spot 

 fires ahead of the solid fire edge around 

 the head of Cedar Creek. Tomorrow 

 morning, it appeared, he would need 

 about 100 men with fresh bosses and 

 strawbosses, exclusive of the hot-shot 

 crew. If spot fires were not too nu- 

 merous, the fire might be corralled be- 

 fore tomorrow's dangerous burning 

 period began at about 10 a. m., an hour 

 that has special significance to fire 

 fighters in planning the control of big 

 fires. It is a sort of deadline they have 

 set for themselves, based on long ex- 

 perience. 



The Cedarville Employment Service 

 was called and asked to round up 50 

 good men to be sent immediately to 

 Cedar Creek by bus and to send an ad- 

 ditional 100 to arrive by 9 p. m. for 

 the morning shift. Calls went to other 

 ranger districts for crew bosses and 

 strawbosses to handle the new forces. 

 The top overhead would have to carry 

 on through another shift without rest 

 or sleep, but that was usual and ex- 

 pected in such emergencies. 



Johnson, the boss of the overhead 

 fire crew, called in. He was brought up 

 to date on the task and the plans to 

 meet it: Loitved would drop him a 

 parachute message at Cedar Creek, 

 giving the information obtained from 

 the plane reconnaissance. Ranger Rob- 

 erts' camp would have the facts on all 

 control forces available for both the 

 Snag Flat and Cedar Creek operations 

 by the time of his arrival. 



Loitved dropped a map and the 

 message for Johnson, advising that the 

 fire was rolling into Ant Creek faster 



than expected but that the main Cedar 

 Creek blow-up would likely not get 

 out of the drainage during the after- 

 noon; that he had taken Freeman on 

 the trip with him and that Freeman 

 would return to serve him as boss for 

 the spot-fire area. That was good 

 news but Loitved's message also said 

 that, with a wind, the burning dead 

 snags on Roberts' side of the river 

 could give more trouble and that, if at 

 all possible, Johnson should assign him 

 a couple of saw gangs from Swanson's 

 crew to make sure of getting all the 

 snags cut down before morning. John- 

 son knew what that meant: "Looks 

 like a rough night for the boys." 



A message came from Roberts' 

 camp: The road crew should be in 

 about 2:45; the Swanson outfit about 

 3. The tanker crews and Johnson and 

 his overhead were on the job. Roberts' 

 patrolmen and the tanker crews had 

 cooled down the hot sectors cornering 

 on the Red River road. That was luck. 



Johnson made a quick trip up Fly 

 and Ant Creeks to see the situation 

 first-hand. For the moment he would 

 have to depend upon the information 

 in Loitved's message as to what might 

 happen in the head of Cedar Creek. 

 He took his fire-crew bosses, Ellsworth 

 and Armstrong, with him on this sur- 

 vey because they would direct the 

 work on the lines. The rest of the over- 

 head crew were left to help the tanker 

 crews on the hot sectors stemming from 

 the Red River road. 



The fire on the Fly Creek slope was 

 found to be moving slowly downhill 

 against the wind. The rolling, fiery 

 pine cones and acorns as well as the 

 red-hot rocks were the main source of 

 spread. Fire on the Ant Creek slope was 

 spreading downhill pretty fast with 

 long fingers developed from rolling em- 

 bers and flaming cones, but there were 

 not many snags to be dealt with. He 

 could probably trench around most of 

 the snags before backfiring, and then 

 hold fire from them with the tankers; 

 thus he could spare two saw gangs for 

 transfer to Roberts. If a decision had 

 to be made between quick holding of 



