as many regular fire personnel as Region 1. 

 Alaska has only 8 percent as many people per 

 square mile to draw upon for fighting fires in 

 its vast, inaccessible territory. The annual burned 

 area is 250 times as large as that in Region 1, 

 or 36 times as great per million acres protected. 



Major operational bases and warehouse 

 facilities located at Anchorage and Fairbanks are 

 augmented by several district centers and guard 

 stations. Since the source of supply of many 

 basic firefighting needs is many thousands of 

 miles away from these two cities and economical 

 delivery of them is very slow, successful dis- 

 patching of men and equipment is dependent 

 upon close planning many months in advance. A 

 highly reliable communication system is manda- 

 tory for operating such a widely spread fire con- 

 trol system. Radio equipment is being updated 

 and the system expanded. Firefighting crews 

 are hard to find, but crews of native Indians and 

 Eskimos from small villages have proved to be 

 excellent firefighters. Some tools and equipment 

 commonly used elsewhere in the United States 

 can be used effectively in Interior Alaska, but 

 specially developed tools are needed to obtain 

 maximum performance from the few available 

 firefighters. Use of heavy fireline equipment is 

 limited to dry slopes near roads. 



Aircraft, both government and private, are 

 being used increasingly for detection, transporta- 

 tion of personnel, smokejumping, supply, recon- 

 naissance, application of retardants, and general 

 administration. Use of helicopters is closely co- 

 ordinated with other air and ground attack pro- 

 cedures. Foot travel is impossible over much of 

 Interior Alaska because of bogs, meandering 

 rivers, lakes, uneven terrain, and long distances. 



Early detection of fires is a major problem 

 since no fixed lookouts exist in Interior Alaska, 

 and aerial patrol consists of one World War II 

 pursuit-type airplane and intermittent use of 

 other smaller craft during critical periods. Re- 

 ports from commercial and military aircraft help, 

 but since large areas are seen only occasionally, 

 many fires cover hundreds of acres before being 

 discovered and other fires are never seen until 

 they have become extinguished from natural 

 circumstances. Procedures must be developed 

 for detecting, tracking, and reporting thunder- 



storms since they are responsible for three- 

 fourths of the total area burned annually. 



Attack time is being shortened by dropping 

 retardants from planes and immediately follow- 

 ing them by smokejumpers. Helicopters and 

 ground forces are quickly moved in so that 

 jumpers can return to base to become available 

 for new fires. Forty-four percent of all reported 

 fires start farther than 100 miles from head- 

 quarters. Speeding up of detection will pay off 

 well by reducing the size of fires and the cost of 

 suppression. Size class of fires increases as the 

 length of time between discovery and control 

 increases. Small fires are controlled within 2 

 hours from attack; but nearly half of all fires that 

 cover more than 300 acres require more than 3 

 days to control. In the spruce type, 70 percent 

 of small fires are only smoldering when at- 

 tacked, whereas 47 percent of large fires are 

 crowning at time of attack. The increasing vio- 

 lence of fires as their size increases again illus- 

 trates the need for early discovery and attack. 



Total cost of fire protection in 1958 was 

 1.01 cents per acre as compared to 0.80 cent per 

 acre on land in other States protected by the 

 Bureau of Land Management; but Interior 

 Alaska's burned area on 225 million protected 

 acres averaged nearly seven times that for other 

 States on 133 million protected acres for the 

 period of 1950-58. The long-term goal of an- 

 nual allowable burn is a maximum of 100,000 

 acres. 



Several methods for using fire in disposing 

 of land-clearing debris have been studied and 

 some guides developed, but none have been 

 found completely suitable for universal adop- 

 tion. As yet untapped are means for fully using 

 fire as an effective tool in attaining forest man- 

 agement objectives. Research in economics, 

 forestry, and fire control operations is critically 

 needed to help strike a balance between the 

 strength of detection, presuppression, and sup- 

 pression, and the most favorable overall cost of 

 protection. In fire control planning and suppres- 

 sion, the primary factors that influence fire size 

 and difficulty of control — weather, fuels, and 

 topography — must at all times be kept in the 

 forefront; no fire protection plan can be complete 

 without incorporating the probable effect of 

 these major influences. 



7 



