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Show Parachutes, Jeeps, Halftracks, Flamethrowers, Will Be Used in Peacetime to Battle Forest Fires Methods Devised for War Are Being Adapted to Save Timber Resources The swords of war become the plowshares of. peace, and this time Mars has some weapons that are going to come in mighty handy in the r - - - rv,-.j j. combat It. an-J plenty of oxygen to make it burn freely. Thus. 11 the Original fire doe get out of control of the first paratroop-' paratroop-' ers to reach It. and proves too big for the first reinforcements BUO. almost certain that the third. v. of paratroopers and ground force will resort to building backfires and digging trenches as the maximum effort 1o check ... Bulldozer, and plow-equipped half tracks will mcch-anize mcch-anize a large part of the digging Job Men with flame-throwers and extinguishers extin-guishers will handle the backfires Other men with gasoline-powered chain-saws" will clear the path of the bulldozers and half-tracks of trees too big for them to bowl over America has a big stake in forest lands. Forest operators are seeing to it that our trees continue to grow, but they know that fire is the biggest never ending battle against forest fires. Some very logical questions are being asked today: to-day: Why not use fire-extinguishing bombs to drop on forest fires? Why not use bombers, equipped with precision pre-cision sights, to aim these bombs? Why not use fire- menace to growin. incj w ons with which to fight fires, and they expect those that this war provides pro-vides will help to keep a better control con-trol over this persistent enemy. fighting parachute troops to drop behind "enemy" lines or to transport to fire regions difficult dif-ficult to negotiate by land? The man who Is expected to take charge of this program is David Godwin, a veteran of the forest serv-! serv-! ice, who has been active in anti-fire experimental work for a number of years. Godwin already has investigated the possibility of dive-bombing forest for-est fires, using bombs which in real-' real-' Hy were exploding fire extinguishers. extinguish-ers. That, however, was a number of years ago, and didn't meet with much success. It was difficult, the experimenters found, to hit the exact spot where the bomb-extinguishers would do the most good, and there was difficulty in covering a suf- ftpifsntlv larOA ttynn As soon as a forest ranger spots a fire he radios for the flying firefighters. fire-fighters. Here a "smoke Jumper" is making a "feather bed landing" in the tops of a young coniferous growth. fires," burning out areas in the path of spreading flames. Accompanying Accompany-ing them would be men with fire extinguishers, ex-tinguishers, to guard against the back fires getting out of control. The paratrooper, however, will doubtless have a glory and a duty all his own. His greatest service will come from the fact that he can get there first. Once a watcher from a fire-tower or from a patrolling plane spots smoke, it need be only a few minutes until a paratrooper can land within 50 or 100 yards of the Aviation enthusiasts, however, are counting upon effective bomb-sight and other precision instruments to change this situation. As an alter- I native, they believe there may be j great possibilities in the use of heli- ! j copters. No doubt a fleet of bombing bomb-ing planes could be used to advantage advan-tage in blasting a fire out of a forest, , especially with ground support from I a paratrooper battalion. The use of parachute-dropped I troops to fight forest fires was first tried a few years ago, and they have I blaze, and by getting there while the fire is Just starting, he will be able in many cases to extinguish it without with-out additional help. Paratroopers by Hundred. But when long periods of dryness have rendered the forests highly inflammable in-flammable and fires spread quickly, a radio summons from the spotters can bring reinforcements in a hurry. hur-ry. A single big plane may bring a score or more paratroopers; a dozen doz-en planes could bring them by the hundreds. , been seeing action in this capacity ever since. But there never has been enough of them to tombat a really big fire. This number can be expanded greatly after the war, and ihe wartime training of paratroop combat units can bring about the organization of a formidable flre-Bghting flre-Bghting force. i . 'Jeep' Will Be Fire Engine. When it comes to post-war techniques tech-niques in forest fire fighting, however, how-ever, it may be not only the use of waves of bombing planes, and parachute para-chute troops to augment the present forces. The ubiquitous "Jeep" ac-; ac-; customed to the Jungle trails of j New Guinea and the difficult terrain i of Africa and Italy is already recommended rec-ommended by professional foresters as highly suitable for service as a miniature fire engine. Likewise, the "walkie-talkie" radio unquestionably will be used by the thousands' to keep in contact between fire chiefs, their crewmen, aviation spotters, pilots pi-lots and paratroopers overhead. "Half-tracks," which combine automobile au-tomobile speeds with tank and tractor trac-tor ability to negotiate swamps and rugged land, can serve efllciently as big brother to the jeeps, and for use as bulldozers to scrape fire trail barriers bar-riers to the progress of flames. Bulldozers Bull-dozers already are essential fire- fighting equipment. Even flame-throwers developed by ; the chemical warfare service may j be called upon for building "back With their faces protected by plastic plas-tic masks, heads covered with padded pad-ded helmets, and bodies covered with non-ripping fabrics, to spare them injuries in case of tree-top landings; and with coils of rope handy for quick descent from the trees, the paratroopers can reach a fire many precious minutes sooner than men on trucks or horseback can generally arrive. Portable fire-fighting devices that are strapped to a man's back are already standard forest equipment suitable for the paratroopers. Sometimes Some-times these are hand-pumps with a small tank of water. An alternative alterna-tive device uses water but builds the pressure behind it with carbon dioxide, either in its liquid form or in the form of "dry ice." Some portable extinguishers use carbon dioxide di-oxide itself to play upon the fires. It snuffs them out by driving away the oxygen. Extinguishers of greater great-er capacity and other supplies will be attached to parachutes and dropped from other planes. Meantime, the jeeps and halftracks, half-tracks, trucks and bulldozers will be moving up with other reinforcements reinforce-ments and supplies. They may bring the flame throwers to build back fires, if necessary. They'll bring long lines of hose and high-pressure pumps, powered by motors which are twins to those used on rowboats. With the high pressure equipment, they'll be able to combat fires in "snags," dead trees which are an especial menace because they tend to carry ground fires upward to the tops of other trees. Ground Reinforcements. When a forest fire goes into the tree tops it is about as difficult to check as any fire can possibly be. In an old fvrest a crown fire may be as high above ground as the 15th story of a skyscraper with no automatic au-tomatic sprinkler system to help After landing the "smoke jumper" unstraps his parachute and goes to work with his portable fire extinguisher. He carries other tool such as axes and spades. The heavier equipment can be dropped by parachute para-chute when necessary. |
