512 



his emergency kit to the scenes of acci- 

 dents on the fire line in the national 

 forests. An injured employee, struck by 

 a falling snag, suffering from a rup- 

 tured appendix, or bleeding from an 

 ax wound, can thus have expert atten- 

 tion with less delay than would often 

 occur had the injury been received in 

 a large city. 



Statistics on 10,000 timber jumps 

 offer some interesting information. For 

 instance, men older than 29 years can- 

 not jump without high risk of injury. 

 Nor can men weighing more than 180 

 pounds expect to hit the ground with- 

 out broken bones. The record indicates 

 that fewest accidents occur after the 

 jumper has made 13 descents. 



BESIDES SMOKE JUMPING, air trans- 

 portation has made other contributions 

 to the control of forest fires. They can 

 be illustrated by the sequence followed 

 in suppressing a back-country fire in 

 the Rockies, in heavily forested terri- 

 tory that straddles the most rugged 

 part of the Continental Divide. It is a 

 roadless expanse of deep, cliff-sided 

 canyons and spectacular granite moun- 

 tains up to 2 miles above sea level. The 

 bottoms are scorching hot; the heights 

 are chill from the air over glaciers and 

 slides. The wind is a chaos of currents. 

 Pack trails, which switch back steeply 

 over the passes and skirt the precipitous 

 walls, provide access to this wilderness 

 of forests and wildlife. Once these trails 

 were the tenuous supply route to 

 the widely separated lookouts atop the 

 peaks, and up them, when lightning 

 started fires, the smokechaser and fire 

 crews labored at 2 or 3 miles an hour 

 on their slow way to the battles. They 

 were often too late in arriving as 

 great burned scars, thousands of acres 

 of ghost trees, testify. 



On a few well-distributed flats along 

 the bottom of major canyons are short 

 landing strips, suitable for use by small, 

 slow-flying aircraft. Larger strips are 

 not possible because of topographic 

 obstacles. At one of these strips is lo- 

 cated the ranger station, which serves 

 as a control center for air operations 



Yearbook of Agriculture 1949 



and in which a battery of instruments 

 indicate current fire conditions, among 

 them fuel moisture, humidity, and 

 wind movement. If burning conditions 

 are dangerous an observer in a patrol 

 plane takes off to see if fires have 

 broken out. His flight follows a care- 

 fully plotted course, worked out 

 through a study of topographic pro- 

 files, the location of the most hazard- 

 ous fuel bodies, the angle of the sun's 

 rays, direction and strength of the 

 wind, and similar factors that together 

 tell him where and how to make the 

 most of each minute of flying. The ob- 

 server is trained in map reading, fuel 

 identification, and fire behavior. On 

 his analysis of conditions at a fire de- 

 pends the action of the fire fighters. 

 The pilot, too, is schooled in naviga- 

 tion and map reading, so that he can 

 find any specified quarter-acre spot 

 in a forest. He knows the air currents 

 in all the canyons, and he also is a 

 qualified fire observer. 



The observer spots a wisp of smoke 

 no larger than that from the chimney 

 of a residence in a far corner of the 

 forest. The pilot swings the plane over 

 to investigate at close range. The ob- 

 server switches on his radio and noti- 

 fies the ranger station that he sees a 

 fire. The suppression forces get the 

 alert signal; the jumpers are readied 

 for the take-off; a transport plane is 

 warmed up. 



The observation plane slides in over 

 the fire at treetop level. Its exact loca- 

 tion was plotted on the map as the 

 approach was made ; now the job is to 

 determine just what the fire is doing 

 and what are its potentials. This in- 

 formation determines the suppression 

 action to be taken. 



Within 3 minutes the observer has 

 surveyed the situation and radios to 

 headquarters. Calculations indicate the 

 need for five men within the hour. 

 Otherwise, because of the dense, highly 

 inflammable fuels, it will become a 

 fast-running, forest-consuming mon- 

 ster. It is 40 miles from the nearest 

 road and 10 miles from the nearest 

 trail. In 1920, or even in 1940, the 



