Notes and Correspondence 



I8S 



Fire Prevention on Tamalpais 

 By Frederick E. Olmsted 

 Forester for the Tamalpais Fire Association 



The disastrous fire on Mount Tamalpais last summer has had one 

 excellent result. Measures are now being taken which will make a re- 

 currence of such a conflagration impossible. 



The story of the big fire is too well known to need repeating ; but the 

 lessons to be drawn from it are extremely interesting and should be 

 emphasized over and over again. As in the case of every serious 

 forest or brush fire the great mistake occurred at the very beginning. 

 The fire was not put out at the start. When a fire is small it is 

 easily controlled and squelched. After it has spread, fanned by vio- 

 lent winds, whole armies of fire fighters are of little avail. A brush 

 fire, by the way, is never out until it is cold, a fact which is too often 

 disregarded with dire results. 



This particular fire could have been nipped in the bud and frozen at 

 the outbreak if the machine for just that purpose had existed and acted. 

 There was no such machine. The big fire was the outgrowth of one 

 or two little fires which were fought and apparently conquered by 

 volunteer fighters, chiefly employees of the Mount Tamalpais Railroad. 

 The railroad, by the way, is always on the job when fire breaks out 

 and gives freely of its men and resources in emergencies. Last August 

 this crooked road dug into its pockets for something like $10,000 be- 

 fore the fight was finished, a fact which the public should bear in 

 mind. However, fire fighting was an incidental duty to railroad sec- 

 tion men; they had their regular work to perform and went back to 

 such work when they thought the little fires had been put out. The 

 fires were not out. When this became evident and the section men 

 were thrown back to fire fighting work they found conditions beyond 

 their control and were obliged to call for assistance. 



From then on the story is simply one of the rapid spread of the 

 fire, involving a constantly greater fire line to hold in check, and re- 

 peated calls for more and more men to do this work. At this stage 

 of the proceedings another lesson became clearly evident. As soon as 

 the fight drifted out of the hands of the section crew and its boss, 

 there was no boss. Or, what was still worse, there were numerous 

 bosses, each one knowing precisely what should be done and no two 

 of them agreeing about it. As a consequence the attacking forces be- 

 came a hodge-podge of individual effort without orderly direction or 

 plan, resulting in fatal delays, wasted work and indescribable confusion. 

 Out of this chaos order was slowly restored,, first through a citizens' 

 committee in Mill Valley acting in co-operation with Mr. Runyon of 

 the railroad, and, later on, through the good offices of the United States 

 Army, working under the advice of the District Forester, United States 

 Forest Service. By that time some four or five thousand men were en- 

 deavoring to put out a fire which, before it ran its course, involved a 

 total loss of nearly $50,000. If half a dozen well equipped men had been 



