Forestry Notes. 



75 



Forest Fire The average fire season in California is a 153-days 

 Protection drought, during which 655 fires occur on the national 



IN California. forests. The season of 1912 lasted 172 days and 795 

 fires occurred. So far as these two factors go it was 

 worse than the average by 19 days and 140 fires. 



Out of these 795 fires, 176 were serious ones, covering over ten 

 acres and doing over one hundred dollars' worth of damage each; 619 

 were under ten acres, and 368, or 46 per cent of the total, were under 

 one-quarter of an acre in size and did no damage at all. It is on the last 

 class that the comparative efficiency of the protective organization can 

 be figured from year to year. In 1912 all previous records were beaten 

 by II per cent. . . . 



Another figure we are keeping close track of for purposes of com- 

 parative efficiency is the average acreage per fire. For the preceding 

 four years it has run 296, 225, 653 and 125 acres. In 1912 it was 67 

 acres. . . . 



Three primary causes were responsible for these results. The first 

 was the approaching completion of our communication system, the value 

 of which is accumulative from year to year ; the second was the wide 

 extension of the permanent lookout system, and the third the great 

 increase in the number of men on the rolls during the peak of the danger 

 season. 



The lookout stations vary from a costly steel tower, with a roofed 

 platform and telescope on top, to a flat rock with an old resident with 

 the country in his head on top. Every one is manned from earliest day- 

 Hght till dark all summer long and every one is connected by 'phone. 

 Seventy of these lookout stations were in operation last summer, tied in 

 with 900 'phones, on the timbered national forests in California. 



A study of the records of several hundred individual fires showed us 

 that the intensity of the danger steadily increased from the middle of 

 July to the middle of September, when, on account of the cool nights, 

 it began to decrease. A fire that one man could handle in June or late 

 September would require six men in August. . . . 



One particularly encouraging feature of the year's work is the in- 

 creased growth of co-operative fire prevention between the Forest 

 Service and timber operators in California. Several formal co-operative 

 cost-sharing agreements were in effect and many more informal pro- 

 tective arrangements were perfected between the lumbermen and the 

 local forest authorities. The formation of the California Forest Pro- 

 tective Association last spring furnishes the means for a still further 

 increase in co-operative forest protection. — Extracts from address by 

 Mr. Coert Du Bois, District Forester, District No. 5, delivered before 

 the Forest Fire Conference, Seattle, Wash., December 2, igi2. 



