126 PERMANENT PATROL. 



the second stage, and ignorant, incompetent and undisciplined for the 

 third. An increase of regular patrolmen, however small, would be 

 much more useful than the exigency patrol. The work of exigency 

 patrols has been reported to me in a number of cases. The shortest 

 time was the patrol sent to the Henniger Flat flre. This fire was on 

 the south face of the Sierra Madre within two hours of the City ol Pas- 

 adena. The patrol reached the scene of the flre the next day, sixteen 

 hours after it started, and after the flre was out. The Martin's Camp 

 force and my Water Company force stopped this terrible fire at natural 

 fire breaks on ridges and in washes. This is not a criticism of any 

 officer, but of an impossible system. Too much time must be wasted in 

 reachin.if a flre by this method. Reports on other exigency patrols show 

 that from two to five days elapse between the starting of the flre and 

 the arrival of the patrol. 



Generally these exigency patrols have been hastily gathered in 

 towns and cities. The character of men thus recruited is not of the 

 best. There can be no discipline in such a force. They are not prop- 

 erly clothed or shod for mountain fire work. They do not know how to 

 fight fire. They do not know how to care for themselves either as to 

 water or food. Few of them are physically fit for the arduous work. 

 If, on the other hand, you have call men located in and about the 

 mountains for exigency patrol work, you are very likely to have fires 

 occur when other sources of money are stagnant, a frequent condi- 

 tion with this type of men. It is charged now that forest fires 

 have been set and renewed to secure work on fire extinction. An ex- 

 igency patrol is not of much if any account. Three or four intelligent 

 and capable men can do more good on flre work than a hundred corner 

 loafers pitched into a brush mountain on flre. I wish it clearly under- 

 stood that no officer is criticised. It is the system which is at fault. 



The money saved by cutting off some of the subordinate forest 

 supervisors and thus saved by dropping the exigency patrols, would 

 double your present regular patrol in all the most dangerous districts 

 in the south. 



At the present time the forest reserves in Southern California are 

 divided Into patrol districts. In each of these there is one patrolman. 

 These patrolmen have no defined relation to each other. In case any 

 one of them needs help he goes to the nearest point at which commun- 

 ication with an officer can be had and asks for it. Valuable time is 

 necessarily lost in this way. What would seem better would be as fol- 

 lows: 



