. SPECIALIZED FOREST PROTECTION 13 



edge or to make no guard-lime at all but try to beat out the fire or to extinguish it with 

 water, is a tactical one. Fire-fighting tactics have advanced much further in organized 

 development than has strategy. A considerable number of methods are known and 

 much has been dome toward improving these methods. Particularly is this the case in 

 methods for using water in fighting forest fires. Theoretically water is the ideal 

 material to use for fire extinguishment 'but the practical difficulties of getting the 

 material to the point of use are very great in all but a few very limited regions. As 

 might be anticipated, it is only those highly perfected organizations which have solved 

 the problems of preparedness and strategy that are able to advance with real success 

 beyond the simple fire-fighting tactics to the employment of more elaborate methods 

 involving the use of water, particularly the employment of gasolene pumps. 



Section 13 Value of Communication System in Field Operation 



The value of a highly developed system of communication lies in making 

 possible the rapid concentration of adequate control forces on the fire-line and in 

 their successful maintenance. It has little direct bearing on the actual conduct of 

 the fight. Indeed, an unspecialized force with no rapid means of communication may 

 use just as efficient tactics as the most highly specialized force with the most improved 

 system of intercommunication. Where it will fail, however, will be in the early 

 discovery and in the rapid concentration of adequate forces in such fires as occur and 

 in the ability to handle and maintain large forces in regions of difficult accessibility. 

 The result is seen in comparing the records of specialized with non-specialized forces. 

 Wherever conditions are at all comparable, a specialized staff will secure protection 

 at a mere fraction of the cost of equal protection by an untrained non-specialized 

 staff. Moreover, the specialized force will be able to secure adjustment of expendi- 

 ture according to the character of the season from year to year, or even from period 

 to period during any one season, which an unspecialized force cannot do with any 

 real success. Finally, the specialized force will weather the periodical unfavourable 

 seasons with success, both because it expands automatically according to the danger 

 and because it strikes quickly and places fires under control without delay. It cannot 

 be taken by surprise but detects and locates fires with certainty and precision while 

 they are still in an easily controllable stage. Its record will show few or no large 

 fires in a dangerous season and a low average of acreage per fire, while the record 

 of the non-specialized force in a dangerous season will always show a break-down 

 more or less complete and a high percentage of fires that get beyond all control and 

 burn themselves out or until extinguished by rain. These periodic break-downs are 

 of much greater importance in judging the efficiency of fire-protective organizations 

 than is generally admitted, since it not infrequently happens that the destruction 

 that occurs in a single disastrous season more than offsets the protection afforded 

 during a very long series of favourable years. On the whole, in most timbered 

 regions where advancing settlement, railways, lumbering operations, and various 

 other developments have radically changed the forest fire situation for the worse, no 

 organization for forest protection can be considered efficient unless it has made 

 adequate provision for automatically' expanding during exceptionally dangerous sea- 

 sons, so that it can at all times keep the situation well in hand. The real test of 

 success is not control of fires during normal seasons but control during the periodic 

 abnormal season without the necessity for keeping up at all times a large and expen- 

 sive organization that serves 'no other useful purpose. 



