146 REPORT OF ONTARIO GAME No. 52 



Methods of Checking Forest Fires. 



The diflaculty of checking a forest fire once it has obtained a good 

 start and other conditions are favourable to its spread were well illus- 

 trated in the Rainy River District during the past year. The heat 

 generated by a blaze of this nature is stupendous; the sparks, blown 

 from the crowns of trees, will fly great distances on the wings of the 

 wind and thus carry the fire forward with astonishing rapidity, and 

 when the soil is sufficiently dry, the flames will eat their way into it 

 and travel underground, to break out in some fresh spot and thus baffle 

 the efforts of those attempting to extinguish them. In fact, the fire 

 will sometimes smoulder for days in the ground, only very occasionally, 

 if at all, bursting into flame, and though under these conditions it is not 

 so alarming or so difficult to tackle, perhaps, as when the trees are blaz- 

 ing from trunks to crowns, it is none the less necessary to take measures 

 to check its spread, for it will need but the rising of the wind to restore 

 it to life and renewed activity. Indeed, as has been pointed out in a 

 previous section, the desideratum on all occasions is to extinguish the 

 fire as soon as it is discovered, no matter how insignificant or compara- 

 tively dormant it may appear, for the little incipient fire started by a 

 cigarette end, a match, a smudge or a spark may easily develop into a 

 conflagration entailing thousands of dollars' worth of damage. It is 

 evident, therefore, that wherever a great number of catches of flre are 

 to be expected in a forest area, the greatest efforts should be put forth 

 to ensure these catches being extinguished before they have time or 

 opportunity to spread. 



There can be no question that the most fruitful of all sources of 

 fire catches is the steam engine, for sparks and cinders are continually 

 being emitted from the funnel to fall on either side of the right of way, 

 and it is only too obvious how easily, when the vegetation and ground 

 are dry, a blaze may result. There are in force certain regulations 

 enjoining the railways to keep their rights of way clear of inflammable 

 material and enforcing also the use of spark-arrestors, but even were 

 these regulations carried out to the letter, which unfortunately would 

 appear far from being the case in many instances, it is doubtful 

 whether, as long as coal supplies the motive force of the engine, 

 immunity from fire catches can either be expected or attained. This 

 question has, indeed, come markedly to the fore of recent years in 

 various of the States of the Union, and it would seem more than prob- 

 able that the day is not far distant when many of the railways on this 

 continent will be required to make use of some other material than coal 

 when traversing forest belts. It would, in fact, appear that any addi- 

 tional expense incurred in fitting or building engines to consume some 

 form of oil, and in the cost of the oil itself as fuel, could never even 

 approach the sum total of the damage which is almost inevitably caused 

 by the coal cinders and sparks, and for which compensation might 



