.6- 



FIGHTING FARM FIRES 



A few days ago Edwin S. Hartley, V^yben Orchards, V/estfield, Mass., 

 told of tv/o experiences with fires in his locality. In both cases, a power 

 sprayer of the type used for orchard spraying was used to very good advan- 

 tage. Mr. Hartley was asked to Jot down the facts as ho recalled them. 

 Here they are. It is just possible that someone in Massachusetts may prof- 

 it from Mr. Hartley's experiencej 



"Last spring a brush fire broke out in a 5-year-old block in our 

 orchards. I discovered the fir© when it was quite small, but the wind was 

 blowing and it v/as so very dry that three men couldn't keep up with it. I 

 drove one-half mile to the barns on the tractor (at 18 m.p.h.) to get the 

 sprayer and found that it had just been emptied in another part of the or- 

 chard. ¥/o took five minutes to fill the tank two- thirds full and that gave 

 the fire good headway. On returning to the fire it was burning over an acre 

 of groimd on a hundred foot front and the brush and mulch were burning as 

 high as fifteen feet in the air. Using a heavy duty type gun with a nozzle 

 delivering 10 gallons per minute one could walk into the fire and smother 

 the flames and drive the fire back into the burned area. A 12 or 14 gallon 

 per minute nozzle v^ould have given a heavier fog but the smaller disc was 

 in the gun. In five minutes the fire was under control. The city fire de- 

 partment arrived but they realized thftt their equipment was hardly needed, 

 oven the regular forest firo truck, so they left in a short time. Later, 

 the crew that was off duty appeared in the sarvioe truck to see how good 

 a job the sprayer v;as doing. 



"On another occasion a brush firo was burning in the Shaker Village 

 district of V/estfield when a bam caught fire, both inside and outside. A 

 farmer who was spraying nearby was called on for assistance. He drove across 

 fields to the barn and sprayed it, smothering the fire promptly. Some C.C.C. 

 boys v:ho were fighting the brush fire with knapsack sprayers emptied their 

 sprayers into the power sprayer tank, and in fifteen minutes the bam fire 

 was out and the house was wet down to prevent the flying sparks from setting 

 that, too* 



"For ordinary grass fires a 6 or 8 nozzle head delivering 12 or 14 

 gallons per minute v;orks best. The man with the gun rides, and the driver 

 moves along the fire line about 10 feet away. Using a power sprayer to fight 

 firo is very fast and efficient. Several mon need to follow the sprayer 

 with bags or brooms or knapsack sprayers to put out small flare-ups and 

 stray sparks." 



The last radio spray message of the 1944 season 

 (Number 22) was released July 24. The objective 

 of those messages is not so much to tell each 

 grower just what he should do in his particular 

 orchard, but to furnish fundamental information 

 about the seasonal behavior of fruit pests and 

 to provide frequent reminders at a time when he 

 can still do something about it. 



