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Show f ,.i - v j : : ;v-f . t;; r:: -J -t-r .yp '14 y.' ; v. . f ,'viKA(:,,;'. v. v .... - f" . ' . ..:..'r'...- ?A C v''"' '' '-Cr..- . ' In areas which are aceessable by truck, a portable pumper is taken by Forest Service crews to fiht forest lies. Early detect ior. of fires can help to keep small b'aes lrom spreadini; iat3 major fires. Serious Fire Conditions Keep Crews on the Alert This is the 6th in a series of 14 articles dealing will) Forest Service aelivites and areas of interest on the LaSal Mountains. By Jerry Hofer Little rain and rising teMiiper-atures teMiiper-atures combined with frequent fre-quent winds during the last week or two have created serious forest fire conditions in Southeastern Utah. This past week there were four fires in the LaSal Mountains and four additional fires were reported on the Monticello Ranger District south of here. All of these fires were controlled con-trolled while small in sizo through alert, concerned forest for-est users reporting fires immediately im-mediately and rapid dispatch of crews to the fires. Last Wednesday, the Forest Ser. vice received a call at 3:45 p.m. from Chuck Proctor in Paradox, Colo., reporting a column of smoke on the mountain near Buckeye Reservoir. Res-ervoir. Within about 2 hours a Forest Service crew was on the fire line. The fire was caused by lightning and was located about 1500 feet below the road in a canyon. Had Mr. Proctor not reported re-ported the fire it could have easily burned up the steep slope and could have become a large fire instead of being contained and extinguished after burning about three acres. ac-res. The Forest Service starts preparing for the hot, dry fire season long before burning burn-ing conditions become critical. criti-cal. This work is called pre-suppression pre-suppression and includes contacting con-tacting students at schools, Scouting groups on conservation conserva-tion projects, wildlife club-members club-members on outings, putting fire prevention signs in local businesses, distributing firo prevention material from Ihe office and contacting forest users while they are on the mountain. Much of the direct personal contact work is done on high use weekends when the National Na-tional Forests become saturated satur-ated with recreationists. In addition, the Moab Ranger D.strict of the Forest Service maintains a fire weatherstation weather-station at LaSal. Dale Spring of LaSal reads this each afternoon af-ternoon and calls the information infor-mation into the local office. From this, the fire danger for the Meab District is calcu. lated. This information is relayed re-layed to Price via radio and put on a teletype and sent to Salt Lake City. From this and many weather weath-er readings from throughout the Inlermountain area, a forecast is developed and called out to each Ranger District each afternoon. This helps to predict the amount and type of prevention activ. ity which will be needed for any given time. In addition to personal contacts, con-tacts, the Forest Service also conducts ground and aerial patrols to spot fires. The schedule of patrols is based on the amount of recreation pressure and the weather such as how much lightning. The philosophy behind these patrols is that if a fire is dis- covered and attacked while small, the chances of containing con-taining it before it becomes a major fire are much great, er. Even with patrols and extensive ex-tensive pre-suppression work the Forest Service still needs great cooperation from die public to protecT. their public lands. Any person spotting what he feels is a forest fire should call the Forest Service at 259-7241 or the Sheriffs Office at 259.5612. |