158 REPORT OF THE No. 3 



supervision of the construction of nine miles of telephone line connecting the 

 Remi Lake station, which is located on an island, with the telegraph office at 

 Moonbeam, Ont. As the result of such work during the past and previous 

 years, the Branch now has telephone connection at all established bases. 



Summary of Flight Records: 



Listed below is a summary of the requisitioned flying for the Province, 

 classified as to districts and kinds of work. As will be noted there have been 

 distinguished two main lines of work, (1) Forest Protection with two sub- 

 divisions, (a) Fire Patrol and (b) Fire Suppression, and (2) Forest Survey, also 

 having two subdivisions (a) Aerial Sketch Type Mapping, (b) Photograpihc 

 Survey. An attempt has been made to analyse and discuss these in detail : 



1. Forest Protection: 



(a) Fire Patrol. — Under this heading has been included (1) all flying devoted 

 primarily or wholly to the discovery and reporting of fire, (2) the examination 

 of going fires, either by observers or other members of the Branch's Fire Pro- 

 tection staff, (3) a certain amount of miscellaneous flying by protection officers 

 in connection with inspection or general examination of conditions. Examining 

 the record of hours flown on this work, it is interesting to note the relationship 

 between the rate of fire discovery per hour and the occurrence of settlement. 

 This is particularly striking in the case of the Remi Lake patrol, which is con- 

 fined during a good portion of its course to the developing settlement on the 

 Clay Belt. At this station the discovery of new fires is found to be at the rate 

 of six per hour flown, or one every ten minutes. In contrast to this, the Oba 

 Lake Patrol, covering a territory very largely made up of unsettled forest area, 

 has an occurrence rate of one fire in fifty-six hours of flying, or one every 3,360 

 minutes. It would, thus, appear superficially that the Cochrane Inspectorate 

 came through a bad fire season. Further examination of the records will show, 

 however, that actually a much more serious fire situation is represented by the 

 six fires reported in the Oba Inspectorate than by the 447 in the Cochrane, 

 since in the latter only one reached a dangerous condition, while in the former 

 four were classed as serious forest fires. Fire occurrence, taken alone, cannot 

 be used as an index to relative hazard conditions. 



(b) Suppression. — Under this heading has been included only flying requi- 

 sitioned for the actual transportation of men or supplies in connection with 

 fire fighting. An indication of the sphere of greatest usefulness for flying of 

 this kind can perhaps be found in the indicated increase in patrols where means 

 of travel and communication are poor. This again has a relation to settlement. 



The growing importance of suppression and general transportation, par- 

 ticularly in the Western Patrol, has brought out the necessity of further detailed 

 information as to the possibilities and factors affecting this class of aerial work. 

 For supplying such information it has been suggested by the observer in charge 

 of Western Patrols that, as in the case of fire patrols, all requisitions for trans- 

 portation by any machine be made through the observer. This would auto- 

 matically authorize the observer to cover the flight with a complete report 

 showing what was carried, together with times, weights and bulk of load; purpose, 

 destination, weather conditions, etc. Such records would serve a most useful 

 purpose in determining the relative cost of various types of fire suppression 

 transport. It would seem probable that records of this kind would also accent 

 the desirability of obtaining (1) lighter and more compact fire fighting equip- 

 ment, (2) the fitting up of machines to carry special loads. 



