The Western news. [volume] (Libby, Mont.) 1933-current, 1940-07-04

Fight Against
Forest Fires
Large Area of Timber
Land Turned into Raging
Inferno Each Year.
SAYS MORE EDUCATION
IS WHAT rs NEEDED


WASHINGTON, D. c., July L.
If forest fire were raging over
all of Maine, New Hampshire, Yer
mont and Massachusetts,, the doingl
of Mr.. A. Hitler would be showed
off, or at least into a corner Of,
the front page-and recent develop
ments have shown that it takes some
pushing to shove Audacious Adolph
around.
Conflagrations which make rag
ing inferno of an area greater than
that of the four New England states
do take place each year in this
country-but because the damage is
not concentrated in one place at one
time, these catastrophies pass prac-
tically unheralded, according to The
National Wildlife Federation.
The devastation Wreaked by these
blazes is not a blitzkrieg nature
rather it is a relentless process
that goes on and on like Tenny-
sons brook, despite the best efforts
of man to halt it. There isn't day
in the year, nor an hour in the day
that forest fire is not raging some
where in the United States. Stats
tics show that there were on an av-
erage of $4,000 fires annually
through the five-year period from
1888 to 1887. This is an average of
20 an hour-one every three min
utes. Most amazing of all, by far the
majority of these fires are man
made, and one-third of the ravaged
timber lands of our country are set
afire on purpose by incendiaries or
people who fire the woods because
they want to.
Different Motives
Intentional burners are not all
alike in motive. A large number
have economic reasons for burning
When no feed has been stored to
carry cattle through the lean Pc
Rod of the year, they almost starve
before the new grass GENES n.khe
spring. Burning off the old dead
grass enables hungry cattle to get
at the new growth few days
sooner.
This trouble is encountered most
ly in the South, but no section of the
land is wholly free from people
who annually set ablaze thousands
of acres of valuable timber for no
better reason than their fathers and
grandfathers did it
Unemployment is responsible for
many fires. Despite all precau-
tons to avoid hiring men to fight
fire who may have had something
to do with starting it. some men
will set fire to earn few dol
lars when no other job is to be had.
Carelessness Causes 1t
Taking our forest lands as a
whole, incendiaries, careless camp
ers and smokers are responsible for
more than half of the staggering
total of fires each year. On Ma
tional Forest lands, where better
protection is afforded than on state
and private owned lands, the loss
from incendiaries is far less, while
that from smokers and campers is
about the same.
The greatest factor in curling the
ever-t Threatening red destroyer is
education and more education Eff
cient methods of combating fires
once they have started are, of
course, imperative, but much more
efficient is the installation of pro-
per knowledge to prevent forest
fires.
New England has a good fire rec
ord, but this has been partly the
result of low fire hazard in the
past. Driving in the White Noun
tains one can see tourist after tour
ist flip burning cigarette butt out
of a car window without thought
New England is right now facing
the worst fire hazard situation in its
history. The hurricane of Septem-
Der of 1888 smashed over some
100000 acres and left some 81:
billion board feet of trees in an in.
describable swirl Of tangle of wind
thrown timber, drying on the
ground.
| II ever a fire gets started in tina
immense finder box, it may wei
turn the terrain into a holocaus
that will make even the lubricant
itself seem a mild visitation by com
parison.