WITH UUCLE SAM*S NATURALISTS Septenter 25, 1931 



NOT FOR PU3LI CATION 



Speaking: ten minutes. 



AN!TOUNCB.!E JTT: Every other week at this tine our wilds man tells us ahout 

 his visits with Uncle Sam's Naturalists. This week, however, he went to 

 the Forest Service to see just what the Forest Service does to protect our 

 forests from fire, and how it does it. Well - 



If there is anything likely to make a lover of the wilds wild, it is 

 a forest fire. I gaess you have all been reading ahout these "big fires wo 

 have "been having. A month ago, it had already cost the Government way ovor 

 a million and a half dollars to fight the fires in our Western National 

 Forests. The fires had then 'bumod over nearly 400,000 acres of land on 

 the National Forests. While that is loss than the average area lost during 

 the last five years it is almost twice as much as was lost d\aring the entire 

 calendar year 1930. Outside the National Forests h-ogc areas have 'been devas- 

 tated, human lives have been lost, homes have been destroyed, even villages 

 burned up, and hage sums ha,ve been expended in the endeavor to stop fires that 

 for one reason or another grew big and ■unmanageable. 



On the National Forests only a few fires got away and do serious 

 damago. The regular force of rangers and summer fire guards, together with 

 men drawn from road and improvement crct/s, catch all but a fcv/ of the fires 

 in their small and harmless stage. Once in a while a fire is not attacked 

 vdth sufficient speed in its early stage and it gets away; or pcrhrps the 

 co-intry is covered v/ith a pall of smoko and a new fire is not discovcrod until 

 after it has started to make a run; or occasionally a fire is -unmanageable 

 before any homan being could possibly reach it. In one recent instance a 

 fire starting near Newport, Waslaington, just outside the National Forest, 

 supposedly by the explosion of a moonshiner's still, spread so rapidly from 

 the time it started at eleven o'clock one mor:n.:-.g that it hr.d covered 24,000 

 acros by four o'clock that afternoon. Fire fighters never had a chance to 

 catch this fire until after it had made its first run. The real battle 

 vras lost when this fire started. Tho only way to have prevented tliis fire 

 from sweeping in as it did into tho National Forest and doing irrcprjrable 

 damage was to have found some way to prevent tho fire from over starting. In 

 order to control this fire and stop its fiaxthor spread, tho fire fighters 

 had to construct some ninety miles of fire lines. Thoy did this in record 

 breaking time - ninety miles of lino made in four days throiigh rough timbered 

 mountrin covntry is a construction and fire- fighting job of magnitude. 



