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The Dreadful Fireworks: July: Firebrand

You notice I didn't put any exclamation-points after those figures, although I am so liberal with exclamation-points as a rule. "The reason is, Mr. Firebrand (we'll suppose we're talking to one of the careless or ignorant people who are always starting these fires), "the reason is that if the figures themselves don't make you do your own exclaiming, you're too dull to be reading this book, anyhow!" "But our wonderful fire-fighters that we hear so much about, the fire-fighters of the national, State, and other forest services, public and private, what are they doing," you may ask, "that these fires are so terrible and keep on growing?"

They're fighting fires better than they ever have and are acknowledged to be the most skilful fire-fighters in the world. Of 6,000 fires, they stop 3,000, on the average, before they have burned over more than a quarter of an acre, but these firebrand people keep starting new ones faster than the forest firemen can put them out. That's why! "You do this, Mr. Firebrand, by the camp-fires and the embers and the burning matches and cigars and cigarettes you leave behind when you're automobiling, fishing, hunting, picnicking. Having such good times in the beautiful summer woods! "Light your cigar or your cigarette with that and then think a minute. It will help you think again the next time you do the same thing in the woods. Do you wonder that some States have already passed laws making it a punishable offense to throw lighted matches or cigars or cigarettes on the ground in wooded regions whether a fire results or not? Isn't it rather a wonder that all States haven't passed such laws?" "The main reason for the great increase of fires in the woods," says the American Forests and Forest Life Magazine in a recent issue, "is the greater use of our forests and outdoor lands by the people. With the automobile taking more and more fire-ignorant people into the country in search of forests in which to hunt, fish, hike, or rest, forest fires are on the increase. Of the 92,000 fires last year, 92 per cent were started by human agencies." Often a camp-fire is built against a log where it may smoulder for weeks and then, fanned by a breeze, flame up and start a big fire. And any camp-fire left, in which there is a single spark, is a source of similar danger. It's a part of the perversity of things that fire never seems to take quite so much delight in its business as in places where it is not wanted. Fires are almost as "pernickety" as people that way!

BAD "HOUSEKEEPING" AND BAD FIRES Workers in lumber-camps have often set their own and other woods afire by their careless and thriftless ways. They leave the ground covered with the lopped-off branches of their sawlogs, kill young trees by breaking them or tearing off their bark in felling large trees which strike them in falling; and all this dead wood is ready kindling for the first well-placed spark from their logging-engines or the sparks from a locomotive on a near-by railroad or lightning striking a dead tree or a stump. While no way has yet been found to muzzle the lightning, it has been found that it does a great deal of damage in regions where there are dead trees and where brush and logging-rubbish are allowed to accumulate. Bad housekeeping in the woods is just like bad housekeeping in the basement or the attic, a constant invitation to that well-known bad citizen the "Fire-fiend" to "start something." THE SIX-LEGGED FIRE-BUGS Insects are not only among the worst enemies of trees but, strange as it sounds, help start forest fires. Not that they are careless with matches or anything of that kind, but the dead wood of the trees they attack is much more easily set on fire by a lightning-stroke than is the wood of a perfectly healthy and sound tree. Trees around the home can be closely watched so that they will not get into this condition, but this is difficult in the great national forests while we have so few men to do the work. So the foresters, among their other numerous duties, cut down trees that are badly attacked, sell them, when fit for lumber, and see that the bark containing insect broods is burned.

WHEN THE "FIRE-FIEND" TRAVELS "INCOG."

I don't know whether you ever read, in The Strange Adventures of a Pebble, about how earthquakes sometimes travel "incog."; i.e., unknown until they bob up somewhere and begin to do damage. But, anyhow, the "Fire-fiend" that haunts the woods has a trick that reminds me of that odd habit. I refer to the fires, too well known to foresters but not so well known to others, that creep slowly and unseen through half-rotten leaves.

If you don't know the nature of these hidden fires you may unconsciously start one, even when you have been careful, as you think, to put out every spark of the fire you built to fry your fish in summer or warm yourselves on a winter hike. You may have cleared away all the brush and dead grass and built your fire on a spot covered with a mass of rotten leaves; but your fire will dry these leaves, to some extent, and below the surface they may take fire. Then this fire will creep along under the blanket of the top layer and, a good while afterward and a good way off, work itself to the surface and be blown into a blaze by the wind. Fires so started in the autumn have been known to burn slowly for months and then break out in midwinter. THEN LET THERE COME A STIFF BREEZE AND--!

All fires running along on top or underneath the surface of the ground are known, in the language of forestry, as "ground fires." When fanned by high winds, especially if there is much brush, "slash" (branches lopped off in lumbering operations), dead trees, or a thick growth of young Pines, and a ground fire may quickly become a "crown" fire; i.e., a fire that spreads through the tops of the trees. Most of the cone-bearers have a great deal of resin in them, especially in the bark and leaves, and a ground fire, coming to the foot of one of these trees, runs right up the bark, then out on the limbs and branches to the leaves, and so spreads from tree-top to tree-top faster than it is spreading along the ground.

Fires, as every Boy Scout demonstrates every time he starts one of those little wigwam-chimney things for the troop camp, rapidly create a draft of their own. A forest fire, even without the help of any wind, advances very rapidly, and with a strong wind will travel from six to ten miles an hour; and brands, carried at a still more rapid rate, drop away ahead and start new fires.

Such a fire it is practically impossible to stop. But one of the remarkable things the fire-fighters of the forest have learned is how to make such fires stop themselves, as we shall see in Section II.

II. ON THE FIRING-LINE WITH THE FIGHTERS Imagine yourself in a big woods, on a quiet, lazy, summer day, gazing, half-asleep, at the distant hills, fading into the blue haze. Then you see another kind of haze come stealing through the trees, the gray smoke that runs ahead of the billowing black clouds and flames of a forest fire. ANOTHER PAUL REVERE AND THE MINUTEMEN Another pair of eyes saw the smoke of that fire before you did, the eyes of the watcher in one of the lookout stations located on high points or in specially built towers throughout the forested regions, and it was immediately reported by telephone to the office of the nearest fire-ranger. Off he dashes in his machine, stopping for a moment at the scattered homes along the way, rousing the farmers, like a modern Paul Revere. He takes as many people as he can in his own machine, leaving the others to follow in theirs or on horseback. When all reach the scene of the fire, there are, say, twelve men; enough for two crews. Slowly they struggle up the mountainside through the thick brush, until they are slightly above the fire. There they divide into two crews, one in charge of the ranger, the other in that of some other experienced man.

The men work fast, yet with deliberation, cutting away the brush ahead of the fire and raking a path clean of leaves; for they have brought with them the forest-fire fighters' tools -- rakes, mattocks, hatchets, and spades. Next, as an emergency measure, if the fire cannot be checked in any other way, they start a fire themselves -- what is known as a "back-fire." They set it going between the cleared space and the big fire and let it burn up to the cleared space, where it not only stops of its own accord, don't you see, but the clearing and the burned strip together make a path so wide that the big fire can't jump over it. So it is obliged to die for want of anything more to feed on. That's what I meant when I said that when a fire is too big to be put out in any other way, the foresters make it "put itself out." But "back-firing" is dangerous business and should never be attempted by a novice. If you've ever bucked the line in a football-match you have some notion of what this forest-fire game is like. Its a hard struggle that takes all the pluck and staying powers you have in you. That's why the men work deliberately, as I said. When you're fighting a forest fire you must not, in the excitement, overdo yourself and get winded. You must "keep cool"--figuratively speaking!

At times the low-lying smoke and flame is whirled up in a burning, blinding gust, but, with faces blackened and hair and eyebrows singed, the men fight on. Sometimes a man, hurrying to get out of danger and blinded by the smoke, runs into a tree and staggers back stunned and bleeding, but soon he recovers himself and is hard at it again.

Among other tough jobs in these battles with the fires is the frequent necessity of chopping off big, tough roots which have to be cut away so that they won't get on fire, and, burning slowly, underneath the soil, and working along, like those smouldering leaves, start new fires. And piles of rock have to be pulled apart to see that they hide no sparks. "ON THE JUMP! SHE'S OVER THE LINE!"

At times such a fire, in the last stage of the fight, will die down so that it looks as if a few well-directed blows with brush or a burlap bag would put it out. Then along comes a breeze and the sapling Oaks with their dry leaves still clinging to them -- you remember what we learned about this habit of theirs in the November chapter -- and the young Pines with their needles full of resin, burst into flames and the flames pass on to the larger trees. But the men, never losing their nerve, resume the fight, cutting, raking, giving way step by step, when necessary, here and there, but doggedly fighting still. If the fire spreads rapidly it may be necessary for them to take their positions far apart, and this gives the fire a chance to slip through. "Hey, Bill! Back here! On the jump! She's over the line!" And back Bill goes, but not "on the jump," for it's quite a distance off and up-hill all the way. But Bill and his companion finally "stop her," and Bill slides and stumbles down the rocky slope to his former position. Finally the victory is won and the men throw themselves on the ground to rest until the coming of the night patrol; for, just as it is after a big fire in a city, men are left on guard for some time to see that it isn't "playing possum." THE GREATEST OF ALL REVOLUTIONARY WARS In such ways, day after day in different parts of the country, these men are fighting in the hard struggle for a new Declaration of Independence; independence of the fires that are working such havoc in our remaining woods in spite of all the great and growing work that is being done in that direction; and if this struggle is finally won, as it will be only if others do their part, it will mark the success of the greatest Revolutionary War in history.

And in the long summer vacation time, when so many happy groups gather around their camp-fires, we won't forget the picture of thousands of smoke-blinded men, fighting through long days and sleepless nights; and, in the farther West, of settlers' families, after years of labor, viewing the ruins of their little homes, all because a lot of vacationists have ended "a perfect day" by setting the woods afire.

USEFUL HINTS FOR WOOD SCOUTS Yes, and while we're on this fire proposition, I want to tell you something else, and that's this: In some sections of the country farmers are in the habit of burning off the dead grass on pasturelands during the winter, with the idea that earlier and better grass is thus obtained in the spring. Well, there's absolutely nothing in it! In fact, it's just the other way; more and better grass grows on the unburned than on the burned land. You can see for yourself that the old grass and the fallen leaves would, if left alone, enrich the soil and so make better grass from year to year, and that the better sort of grasses would be killed or seriously injured by these fires. Careful investigation by government experts has proven this to be true. Here, I'll give you the very words from Farmers' Bulletin No. 1117: "Burning over the ground with the aim of improving grazing is an expensive mistake. Although it is possible to secure grass for stock a week or two earlier in the spring, most of the rich leguminous plants and annual grasses are exterminated, leaving as survivors only the hardy and coarse perennial grasses."

Then, when you add to this the fact that we are every year burning up so much timber in forest fires and that this grass-burning is one of the most common causes of forest fires -- well, you're not going to do that sort of thing on your farm, are you?

Why, it's the craziest notion in the world!

The great thing is, not to start fires but to stop them. Some of the Western States which still have so much timber are at the very front in this matter of fire protection. In addition to the government and State services the owners of timber tracts have fire-protection associations of their own. In the Pine regions of the Southern States, where the idea of burning over the grass is most popular, there are more forest fires and larger losses than in any other important forest region.

To protect the wood-lot and your nursery of young trees, if you have one, it would be wise to run several furrows around the tract to prevent fires from other peoples' woodlands from crossing over. It is also well to post notices warning hunters and others not to build any fires in your woods without permission.

When it is necessary to burn brush, don't make large heaps. Choose a still day for burning, and plough furrows to protect nearby woods. And when you are through with your burning, put out your fire with water and then cover it with earth. The same precaution applies to camp-fires. "A tree will make a million matches, a match may destroy a million trees," is one of Uncle Sam's wise sayings.

Never forget it!