The best way to prevent fire is to prevent it. Putting out fires already started is better than letting them burn, but as the real foundation of a protective system it is about like lowering a lifeboat after the ship has struck. Only by patrol can the incipient spark or camp fire be extinguished before it becomes a forest fire that has to be fought, taking hours or days instead of minutes. One patrolman can stop 100 incipient fires easier than 100 men can stop one big fire. Fires in the forest may never be wholly averted, but patrol will prevent them from becoming "forest fires."
This is why the progressive lumberman no longer waits till forced to layoff his crew to fight, spending in a day or two a patrolman's salary for a season, shutting down his road and mill for lack of logs, and perhaps in spite of all losing several thousand dollars' worth of timber and equipment. It is also why the progressive non-operating owner no longer considers fire loss the act of God, to be reckoned as an investment risk of several per cent. The man who does not patrol his timber nowadays is like a millman who hires no watchman, has no hose or sprinkler equipment, and carries no insurance. He may escape loss, but by not making a reasonable effort to insure against it he takes a course practically unknown with other forms of property.
Modern fire patrol is systematic. Trained and organized men have definite duties. Tools, assistance and supplies are available at known points and without delay. Trails and look out stations, often supplemented by telephone lines, give the greatest efficiency with the least number of men. Above all, the system is based on the fact that results are most truly measured not by the number of fires extinguished but by the absence of fire at all. Settlers, campers and lumbermen are visited, cautioned and converted. In short, the patrolman has a certain area in which to improve public sentiment. His success in this is worth more than efficiency in fighting fires due to lack of such success. A system devoted to mere fire fighting to be adequate must grow larger as time goes on. One devoted to preventing fire may be reduced, as time makes it successful.
The cost of efficient patrol varies so directly with the risk that it is almost constant as an insurance investment. Where prevalence of fire, difficulty of handling it, etc., make the cost per acre comparatively high, there is equivalent certainty of greater loss if this sum is not spent. Where the owner is warranted in believing his risk small it costs but a trifle to provide sufficient patrol to insure against it. One to 3 cents an acre is spent in the great majority of successful patrols in ordinary seasons.
ASSOCIATE EFFORT
One of the first lessons learned from the establishment of private patrol in the West was that both efficiency and economy are obtained by co-operation between owners. Obviously if one patrolman can cover the holdings of several, it is foolish for each to hire a man. If a fire threatens several tracts, it is better to share the expense of labor hired to put it out. The same is true of building trails, buying tool supplies, etc. This has led to the forming of associations which at a minimum cost to each member accomplish the many tasks of finding suitable men, having them authorized by the State, supervising and supplying them, paying emergency expense, opening trails, etc. Each member pays his share upon the acreage he represents.
These associations offer other important advantages besides the mere cheapening of work. They are admirably adapted to modifying the cost to fit the season. Beginning in spring with an assessment to cover putting the whole territory under the essentials of supervision and patrol, they can add men just as required by the progress of dry weather and reduce again in the fall. Men can be centralized at danger points better than through individual effort. Exceedingly important is the means they afford of bringing in the non-resident owner, the small owner who is not warranted in employing anyone alone, and the non-progressive owner who would otherwise do nothing but is ashamed to stay out of a general movement.
No tract can be safely considered as an independent unit. No protection confined to it alone is as good insurance as the removal of risk from the district within which it lies. Fire is no respecter of section lines. There is always danger of unusual weather in which it may travel a long distance. It is far better to secure the maximum general safety in the locality than to have guarded tracts alternating with fire traps. Moreover attention to individual tracts does not improve surrounding conditions, and the latter may easily become so bad as to make the cost of individual patrol, as well as the risk, far overbalance any financial disadvantage at present through co-operation.
Again, the public is far more likely to take kindly to the enforcement of fire laws by an association than to the action of an individual owner against whom some prejudice may exist. Associations greatly simplify co-operation with State and Government in fire work and tend to bring about appropriations for the purpose. They enable uniform and concentrated effort to improve sentiment and legislation. This booklet and the other work done by the Western Forestry & Conservation Association was made possible by the existence of the local organizations it represents. Their independent local and State effect has been marked.
The bad fire season of 1910 was a supreme test of the associations of the Pacific Northwest. They kept the bad fires in their immense territory down to a number which can be counted on the fingers and their losses were comparatively insignificant. Yet under the weather conditions which existed the thousands of fires they extinguished would certainly otherwise have swept the country and caused a disaster probably unparalleled in American history.