BUSH FIRES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 23, 28 January 1928, Page 8

BUSH FIRES.

"Talking of bush fires," said a woman I know very well, "I always feel so anxious about the poor people in the fallen bush areas, for we had a dreadful time about twenty-eight years ago in the Taranaki district. It was near Stratford in a small place where the bare standing trees and fallen logs were just ripo again for a big blaze. In the rush to get a 'burn' to sow grass in these districts all the big timber or most of it is left standing, and sufficient small stuff is cut to make a good 'burn.' The result is that after being killed and stripped by fire these bare, standing trees gradually rot on the outside, and in a few years there is sufficient tinder on them to start another spectacular blaze. The fallen trees are similarly affected, and a little dry scub, a careless match, a high wind and you will have a fiery furnace in no time.

'"I think I have never seen anything so magnificent as these huge flaring torches of trees hi a high wind on a dark night. But, oh, the dreadful anxiety! No sleep for anybody. The men fiie-beating, the women keeping wet bags on anything inflammable around the buildings; everyone blinded and choked with smoke; little children crying with stinging eyes. Fresh losses reported from other districts, men leaving their own posts to help others in greater extremity. One man I know went off to help a fellow timber miller, when the wind suddenly changed and before he could return his own mill was in cinders. Stacks and stacks of good timber were burnt. Cattle took, refuge where tliey could in dense green bush, swamps and creeks."

I was just a very young wife then," she continued, ' just twenty-one and expecting my second child at any time, hut niv husband and good neighbours had everything planned for safety for us. A wagon was in readiness with mattresses and every comfort in the circumstances if the situation became desperate. Fortunately heavy rain set in before then and the danger was over, but, alas! all my pretty things and baby's were brown and acrid smelling with the dreadful smoke."

In several instances, said my friend, the coats of horses and cattle liad patches burned in thein. A few valuable pedigee horses were fitted with saturated horse blankets, wet sacks and hessian. And it does seem true that as long as there arc standing trees and logs rotting, collecting a good supply of what we might call light-wood, so long will we have these devastating fires. But like the droughts and floods ' 1 New South Wales we shall probably get to look upon them as inevitable. _G. EDITH BURTON"