PENNSYLVANIA'S FIRE LOSSES 



UNUSUALLY severe forest fires 

 in Pennsylvania during the 

 spring did a great amount of 

 damage. So many were the 

 fires that it has not been possible so far 

 to ascertain what the total loss is. 

 The situation, in the opinion of State 

 Forestry Commissioner Conklin is evi- 

 dence of the great necessity of a larger 

 appropriation for the State Forestry 

 Department and also evidence of the 

 short sighted policy of the last legis- 

 lature in making the appropriation a 

 small one and of ex-Governor Tener in 

 further reducing it. Commissioner 

 Conklin says : 



"The Department of Forestry has 

 always preached the doctrine that it is 

 cheaper to prevent fires than to ex- 

 tinguish them. The cost is usually not 

 much greater, and, in addition, the 

 timber and all the other valuable things 

 destroyed are saved. 



"The forest fire law of 1909, in Section 

 18, provides a method for daily patrol, 

 but this provision has been completely 

 nullified since the passage of the law by 

 the refusal of the Legislature to appro- 

 priate sufficient money to place men 

 upon daily patrol. A patrol of the 

 highly dangerous regions, which, in the 

 experience of the department, resirits 

 in the quenching of many fires in their 

 incipiency, would cause careless users 

 of fire in the woods to be more cautious, 

 because of the fact that a patrol is kept. 

 Five minutes work at a fire at its 

 beginning is worth days of labor put in 



after the fire has once obtained a great 

 headway. 



"All danger regions of the State are 

 equipped with Forest Fire Wardens and 

 Assistants, but they cannot go upon daily 

 patrol for want of money to pay them. 

 The appropriation which is allowed the 

 department for this purpose must be 

 skimped out to the very end, and it 

 takes all of it and sometimes more to 

 pay the wages of the men who are 

 actually employed to extinguish fires. 

 The last two Legislatures had to be 

 appealed to for deficiency appropriations. 



"The Department is asking this year 

 for a forest fire appropriation of 

 $150,000. Of course, what is not needed 

 will not be expended, but we must have 

 a fund with which to patrol danger 

 points for the prevention of fire if we 

 are ever to make any great headway 

 against fire in the woods. 



"A comparison of the appropriations 

 which Pennsylvania has made for this 

 purpose with that made by other States 

 is instructive at this time. In Massa- 

 chusetts and New York an annual 

 appropriation of 1 cent per acre for 

 forested land for protective purposes 

 was made. At this rate, the 7,500,000 

 acres of similar Pennsylvania land 

 would require $150,000, or $75,000 per 

 year. Because of adequate protection 

 Massachusetts was able to limit the 

 average area of each fire to 1 1 acres, and 

 New York to eighteen; but in the case 

 of Pennsylvania the average mounts to 

 508 acres per fire." 



A JULY FEATURE 

 "THE WAR'S EFFECT ON RUSSIAN FORESTS" 



Will be graphically described in the July issue of American Forestry by 

 Stanley Washburn, the famous war correspondent of the London Times, 

 who is at the front with the Russian Army. 



In the article is a thrilling word picture of a frightful battle in a dense 

 forest. 



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