The Village of Cranford had been saved from the fire only by a shift of the wind. The woods to the west and the north had been burning briskly for several days, and every able-bodied man in the village had been out, day and night, with little food and less rest, trying to turn off the fire. In spite of all their efforts, however, they would have failed in their task if the change in the weather had not come to their aid. As a consequence, everyone in the village, naturally enough, was still talking about the fire.
“It isn’t often that a village in this part of the country has such a narrow escape,” said Eleanor, looking around. “See, girls, you can see for yourselves how close they were to having to turn and run from the fire.”
“It looks as if some of the houses here had actually been on fire,” said Dolly, as they passed into the outskirts of the village.
“I expect they were. You see, the wind was very high just before the shift came, and it would carry sparks and blazing branches. It’s been a very hot, dry summer, too, and so all the wooden houses were ready to catch fire. The paint was dry and blistered. They probably had to watch these houses very carefully, to be ready to put out a fire the minute it started.”
“It didn’t look so bad from our side of the lake, though, did it?”
“The smoke hid the things that were really dangerous from us, but here they could see all right. I’ll bet that before another summer comes around they’ll be in a position to laugh at a fire.”
“How do you mean? Is there anything they can do to protect themselves—before a fire starts, I mean?”
“That’s the time to protect themselves. When people wait until the fire has actually begun to burn, it’s almost impossible for them to check it. It would have been this time, if the wind had blown for a few hours longer the way it was doing when the fire started.”
“But what can they do?”
“They can have a cleared space between the town and the forest, for one thing, with a lot of brush growing there, if they want to keep that. Then, if a fire starts, they can set the brush afire, and make a back fire, so that the big fire will be checked by the little one. The fire has to have something to feed on, you see, and if it comes to a cleared space that’s fairly wide, it can’t get any further.