Figure 36. Turner Mountain lookout station, Lassen National Forest, California. This is a 10 ft. by 10 ft. cabin with a stove and with folding bed, table, and chairs. The forest officer stationed here watches for forest fires day and night throughout the fire season. Photo by the author.
The Forest Fire Problem Stated. Having seen a little of the causes, behavior and results of forest fires on the National Forests, it is comparatively easy to state the forest fire problem as it occurs on the National Forests. Briefly stated, it is this: With the funds, organization and equipment that are available, the aim of the Forest Service is to keep the area burned over each year (and therefore the damage done) down to an accepted reasonable minimum. But the problem is not as easily worked out as it is stated, due, largely, to a great many uncontrollable and variable factors which cannot be foreseen in advance, the most important of which are the weather conditions. As has been said before, there are two general ways of keeping the area burned over down to an accepted reasonable minimum: either prevent the fires from getting started (as in the case of those started by human agencies) or, after they get started, to get to them with men and fire fighting implements in the shortest possible time after they are found. The former is called fire prevention, and the latter fire suppression or control. How the organization of the National Forests solves these two problems is of the greatest interest.
Fire Prevention. The measures employed for fire prevention may be either administrative, legislative or educative in nature.
The most important administrative measures employed to prevent fire are those that aim to reduce the amount of inflammable material in the National Forests. This is done in many different ways. The free use timber policy enables Rangers to give away much dead timber, both standing and down. Timber operators cutting on the National Forests are required by the Forest Service contract to remove dead snags, which are a fire menace, from the timber sale area. Where there is fire danger, all slashing resulting from such sales must be burned or otherwise disposed of. While grazing is usually not considered a measure to prevent fires, still grass lands that have not been grazed over become very dry in the fall and are a dangerous fire menace. Wherever it is feasible, old slash left by lumbermen on private lands adjacent or near to the National Forests are burned, when the fire can be confined to a small area. Another administrative measure is the reduction of the causes of fires by a patrol force. Forest Guards travel along the highways where there is most traffic and most danger. Their presence often is enough to remind campers, hunters and fishermen to put their camp fires out before leaving them. These patrolmen mix with the people and, if necessary, remind them in a courteous way to be careful to extinguish their camp fires before breaking camp.
Most of the necessary legislative measures for preventing forest fires already exist. The National Forest force is seeking merely to obtain a strict enforcement of existing laws. Railroads are required to use spark-arresters on their locomotives and to provide for keeping their rights-of-way free from inflammable material. Logging camps must also prevent the destruction of National Forest timber by fire by using spark-arresters on all logging engines. The Forest officers are ever on the alert for the detection and apprehension of campers for leaving fires unextinguished and incendiaries for starting fires willfully. These careless individuals are arrested by them without warrant, either under the Federal laws, if the fire occurred on National Forest lands, or under the State law, if it occurred outside of government lands.
Educational measures are for the purpose of educating both the local forest-using public and the general public who may travel through the Forests in the careful use of fires in the forests. Forest officers, especially Rangers, come into personal touch with local residents and users, that is, the ranchers, stockmen, business men, loggers, campers, hunters, fishermen and others. Such people are often reminded by personal appeals by the Forest officers. Most of them have learned by this time, because of having been called upon to help fight fires at one time or another, and having gotten a taste of the result of other people's carelessness. Many written appeals are also sent out by the Supervisor and are slipped into the envelopes when grazing permits and other official documents are mailed. One of these written appeals, and probably the one that has been used most widely, is known as the six rules for the prevention of fires in the mountains:
1. Matches.—Be sure your match is out. Break it in two before you throw it away.
2. Tobacco.—Throw pipe ashes and cigar or cigarette stumps in the dust of the road and stamp or pinch out the fire before leaving them. Don't throw them into the brush, leaves, or needles.
3. Making camp.—Build a small camp fire. Build it in the open, not against a tree or log, or near brush. Scrape away the trash from all around it.
4. Leaving camp.—Never leave a camp fire, even for a short time, without quenching it with water or earth.
5. Bonfires.—Never build bonfires in windy weather or where there is the slightest danger of their escaping from control. Don't make them larger than you need.
6. Fighting fires.—If you find a fire try to put it out. If you can't, get word of it to the nearest United States forest ranger or State fire warden at once. Keep in touch with the rangers.
Besides these kinds of appeals, many kinds of fire warnings are posted at conspicuous places along roads and trails to remind the public to be careful with fire in the Forests.
