276 FEATURES OF FRENCH NATIONAL FOREST ADMINISTRATION 



sive fire protection necessary. In these localities the danger of fire is 

 so great that even costly protection has frequently failed and large 

 areas have been burned. Owing to the excessive fire damage in the 

 Maures and I'Esterel (Var) a special fire protective scheme was first 

 legislated in 1870 and revised in 1893. The main provisions of the law 

 are : The use of fire in any form is forbidden during July, August, and 

 September within 656 feet of forest or brush land, except upon special 

 authorization; at other times charcoal kilns, and other dangerous use of 

 fire, can only be located at the risk of the owner or contractor. Special 

 police powers are accorded both private and public forest officers. Owners 

 of forest or brush land which is not entirely cleared of undergrowth may 

 be required by neighbors to open cleared fire lines 65 to 164 feet in 

 width to be built half on each owner's land. Railroads are also required 

 to clear and maintain fire lines 65 feet from the track; if not completed 

 the work can be done under the direction of forest officers at the expense 

 of the railroads. To encourage road building a subsidy of $932 per 

 mile was granted for suitable roads built within the Maures and I'Esterel 

 area. (See p. 285 for additional details.) 



In 1918 and 1919, however, there were disastrous fires in the Landes 

 and in the Maures and I'Esterel regions because, owing to the war, the 

 undergrowth could not be systematically cleared. The Engineer (for- 

 estry) troops salvaged more than 120,000 cubic meters (about 30,000,000 

 feet board measure) of fire-killed timber in the Landes alone. The 

 chief fire preventive measures in France ^^ have been fire notices, look- 

 out posts connected with telephones, tool depots, fire lines (to fight 

 from, since the French hold that ''one should never count on a fire line 

 to stop a fire by itself") 33 to 66 feet wide, and secondary lines 3.3 to 

 6.6 feet wide, and, finally, cutting of inflammable undergrowth (an 

 efficient means of fire prevention, but expensive). But unquestionably 

 the fire prevention and fighting practice in the United States is on a 

 greater scale and is farther advanced than in Europe; consequently the 

 opportunity for developing forest-fire technique has been larger. Per- 

 haps the greatest lesson to be derived from the intensive protection in 

 France is that with dense and inflammable brush under a pine high forest 

 no measures are reasonably certain unless the underbrush is kept cleared. ^^ 

 Even intensive fire lines will not prevent or stop dangerous fires if there 

 is underbrush and high winds during a drought. In France the protec- 

 tive measures against birds, mammals, fungous diseases, dangers following 

 windfall, or snow damage have not been so intensively developed as in 

 other European countries. There are three main reasons for this. 



16 Jolyet, pp. 581-586. 



IS See also French Forests and Forestry, T. S. Woolsey, Jr., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 

 for conclusions in Algerian and Tunisian fire protection. 



