Forest Fires and their Prevention. 31 



road companies shall give instructions to their section foremen for the prevention 

 and prompt extinguishing of fires originating on their right of way, and they 

 shall cause warning placards, furnished by the Geological Board, to be posted at 

 their stations in the vicinity of forest lands. Any railroad company wilfully 

 violating the requirements of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and 

 railroad employees wilfully violating the requirements of this section shall be 

 guilty of a misdemeanor. 



Sec. 3. For the purpose of this act woodland is taken to include all forest 

 areas, both timber land and cut-over land, and all second growth stands on areas 

 that have at one time been cultivated. 



This law requires the railroads to clear oif a strip 100 feet wide on 

 each side of their track, where it runs through woodland. It has been 

 demonstrated after careful study that most of the live sparks from rail- 

 road locomotives fall within the zone between 50 and 100 feet on each 

 side of the track, and very few fall beyond that distance. Keeping this 

 strip clear would then prevent most of the fires caused by railroads and 

 logging roads, Avhich, as we have seen above, constitute about one-third 

 of the fires in the State. 



Fire Warden System. — The most important problem in the formula- 

 tion of forest laAvs is providing effective machinery for putting them into 

 force. Eighteen States have already organized fire protective systems, the 

 purpose of which is to enforce the forest-fire laws of these States. Little 

 or nothing has been accomplished in States without such systems, though 

 several, like our own, have some excellent laws. A fire warden system 

 generally consists of district, township, or county wardens, who, as a rule, 

 are responsible to some one State official, either the State Forester, the 

 State Forest Commissioner, or State Fire Warden, who is specific; II7 

 charged with fire-protective work and usually also with the forestry 

 work of the State. It is the duty of the Avardens to extinguish fires, 

 arrest offenders against the fire laws, investigate the causes of fires, 

 post warning notices against fire and in some cases to patrol the forests 

 during dry weather. They are paid by the State, or by the county, or 

 by the State and county combined, usually by the hour or day, for the 

 time actually employed. In fixing a rate of payment, care is taken not 

 to make it high cnougli to tempt unscrupulous men to set fire to the 

 woods with the object of drawing pay for extinguishing it. This prac- 

 tice may, of course, be occasionally resorted to, even where the pay is 

 not high, but an efficient county fire warden would soon discover the 

 perpetrators or at least have his suspicions aroused, and one or two 

 drastic sentences, upon conviction, would put a stop to the practice. 

 There are many counties in JSTorth Carolina where fire wardens are not 



