FoKEST Fires and their Prevention. 19 



- Though we are apt to think that our fires are altogether different 

 from those in the West, yet a loss of five human lives through forest 

 fires occurred in North Carolina in 1910. Besides the woman burnt in 

 Cumberland County, referred to in last year's report, a colored girl 

 and an old woman were burnt to death in Columbus County while 

 trying to protect their property from the flames. Two men lost their 

 lives fighting fire in the western part of the State, one in Haywood 

 County, and the other one near Marion in McDowell County. Such 

 deaths are usually spoken of as accidental, but they are preventable 

 accidents, for they would not have occurred had it not been for the 

 criminal carelessness of those who let the fires get out. 



COST TO FIGHT FIRES. 



More than $35,000 was spent by private individuals and lumber com- 

 panies in 1910 in extinguishing forest fires, or two and a half times the 

 amount spent the previous year. This does not comprise the total cost 

 of fighting fire even in the townships reporting, for, as a rule, small 

 fires and those on private land are fought, when any effort is made to 

 extinguish them, by the voluntary help of the neighbors. A glance at 

 the figures in Table 5 shows that about sixteen cents per acre burnt over 

 was spent in the Mountain region to fight fii-es, while only about three 

 cents per acre was spent in the Coastal Plain. This does not mean that 

 the mountain people are not willing to fight fire unless paid for it, for 

 they are just as ready as any one else to assist their neighbors in such 

 emergencies. It means that the lumber companies and other timberland 

 o^^aiers of that region are more alive to the destruction caused by fire 

 than those of the Coastal Plain region. This is partly because many 

 owners of mature timber in eastern North Carolina still burn to protect 

 their timber from more destructive conflagrations, but chiefly because 

 many of the eastern lumbermen own the timber without the land, and 

 so have no interest in protecting the young growth, while those in the 

 Mountain region usually own both land and timber and are anxious 

 to keep fire out. It is an encouraging sign that while twice as much 

 was spent in 1910 in fighting fires in the mountains as Avas spent in 

 l909, only half as great an area Avas burnt over. While the weather 

 was in part responsible for this there is no doubt that the increasing 

 watchfulness and effort on the part of landowners is bringing results. 



LOSS FROM FIRE NOT INCLUDED IN THE TABLES. 



A loss of considerably over $500,000 in one-third of the townships of 

 the State seems a large sum, and yet it is far from representing the 



