AIR FOREST PATROL SAVES NEW JERSEY £27,000 A YEAR

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7412, 20 December 1930, Page 15

AIR FOREST PATROL SAVES NEW JERSEY £27,000 A YEAR

Burned Areas Halved Since Airplanes Adopted Four Years Ago

For generations forest fires have been a pressing problem in New Jersey. From Revolutionary War days, when a carelessly left camp fire might spread havoc in the unsettled woods, right down to the present when tourists and the great seashore traffic often set tires, the pine-grown plains of this sandy soiled commonwealth have been easy prey to the flames.

Mr. Smith sweeps low, tho ’plane staggers in a sudden gust of hot air, rights itself, roars on. The wheels barely skim the treetops as tho ship thunders over tho crew’s heads and the cylinder is tossed out. Mr. Rodgers on the ground picks it up, reads the instructions, notes the map. The ’plane zooms again to patrol. “The state police act as our messengers when we cannot make contact with the deputies,” the Colonel shouted to me. “Sometimes we drop tho cylinders containing maps and instructions at a state police headquarters and they rush it by motor to tho lines.” Much Time Saved. The aerial patrol usually continues through the day, tho Colonel keeping his forces in touch with the progress of other groups, warning them when tho tiam.es threaten to “jump” tho lines, urging more precautions for certain villages which he perceives to be in the lino of tho lire, making suggestions that greatly aid the men below. Often the work of mapping would consume several days if done by ground transportation and then, due to constantly changing fronts, might be inaccurate. It is a pretty big lire that requires more than half an hour’s flight to map now, Colonel Coyle states. The airplane patrol was first adopted by Colonel Coyle, afterwards being taken up elsewhere, notably in the northwest states. “Each year we have a complete report by every deputy warden on the fires in his section,” lie declares. “They put down all that occurred, noting what was done to control each and what could bo done should they recur. Tho second fire finds us ready. We know where we can hope to stop it, how soon, and why we failed, if we did.”

To-day this hazard has been reduced to a point where the State now looks upon a forest fire as nothing more than a slight inconvenience, aside from the loss. And the losses are nominal by comparison to those old days. The reason for this advance is that modern mechanical marvel, the airplane.

New Jersey turned to the •’plane to curb its forest lircs. The result was to cut losses to onc-half what they were, llow the airplane figures in this can ne explained by tho experiences of one trip over a flaming area on which I accompanied the lire warden. The day began for the Forest Fire Service when Norman Rodgers, look-out at Cedar Ridge, spotted a wisp of smoke. Quickly sighting along a quadrant in his lofty observer’s perch ho took a reading on tho map, noted wind velocity, and picked up a telephone.

“Hello, Jcs* There’s a fire southwest of here. I Inakc the reading -13, wind about 20 miles an hour.” A second call is to Jack Thornberg, to whom tho district warden repeats the information, and meanwhile Jess Bozarlh at Barnegat got in touch with Tuckcrton station. Another reading of the quadrant, more wind velocity, and (ho fire has been located. At this point the aviation branch of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service is called. Air Crew Called. Knowing that Mr. Thornberg at Ml. Holly would be gathering a crew for ground work, Mr. Bozartk telephones to Trenton and asks for Col. Leonidas Coyle. The colonel is at his desk on the fourth floor of the State House

New Jersey is divided into three divisions fur fire prevention purposes. Division A runs from the New York line to tho Raritan River. The division warden is J,. IS. Fales, with headquarters at. Butler. Division B is from the Raritan to the Mullica River, the southern boundary roughly paralleling White Horse Pike, with Mr. Thornberg as warden. Division C runs from tno Mullica River to Cape May. P. W. Crozier, Bridgeton, is the warden.

“Munnion Fields, HI miles northwest of Tuckcrton, burning. Wind’s about 29 miles and Llio lire is in that dry timberland bordering the bogs. Might take the village if it continues present direction,” the deputy reports. While Mr. Bozarth, Mr. Thornberg and other deputies centre attention on tho known limits of the fire, Colonel Coyle puts in a call to Wesley Smith, crack pilot of the Philadelphia Air Transport Company, one-time war aviator, ready to fly anywhere so long as his ship and the weather are right.

Tho next smaller unit is the section of which there are 11 to each division, with a deputy or section warden over each. Subordinate to the section wardens arc from 10 to 15 local wardens. These have 15 men subject to call as a crew, who operate similar volunteer firemen in the boroughs. Sprinkled over the State are in all 350 fire wardens. In addition to these regularly constituted fire fighters, tho State may, in emergencies, call upon tho coast guard, borough firefnen, the army at Camp Dix, and the naval and marine forces at Lakchurst. Lookout Towers Help. There are 17 lookout towers at strategic points in tho State, all of them in heavily wooded areas. They are 70 feet high and afford an eye range of from 15 to 30 miles on fair days. The one exception is the tower on top of the Lakchurst naval air hangar which is 270 feet high. One can see nearly 40 milts from Jt.

Colonel Coyle and Wes. Smith are tho aerial patrol of the New Jersey Forest Fire Service. The Colonel is state tire warden. He can recount tales of army life in. the Philippines, with the National Guard in Mexico, or adventuring around the globe. Flying, his la,test hobby, has given New Jersey one of the most up-to-date forest fire prevention means in the United States.

“I’ll bo over the spot in 45 minutes” ho tells Mr. Bozarth. The Colonel is as good as his word. With Mr. Smith tie takes off and roars into the southeast toward the tire.

The purpose of his flight is two-fold. First, he is to map the burning area, and secondly, to direct the fire fighters on the ground. Tho maps are the blue prints of: those below, besides providing an excellent record for future precautions.

“For every dollar tho State spends on airplane service we have figured it saves 250 dollars,” the warden said.

‘ ‘ ituo to uso of planes the last three years we only had two eases where the flames ivc l o not under control In the first 24 hours. 'This is our fourth year in the air.”

From an altitude of 2000 to 3000 feet the Colonel sweeps the horizon with powerful field glasses. At, intervals he signals the pilot to change course, pointing to the smoke. By now it is no longer a single pillar but a. great wall of billowing fleece, streaked with red where the fire has found something particularly inflammable. Tire Area Mapped. It is a fairly large forest fire, as they run now. Time was when a forest fire would last a week or more in New Jersey. Not now. If one burns more than 24 hours Colonel Coyle and his staff feel that they have lost ground. Colonel Coyle immediately starts work on the map. lie sketches with crayon, using rod and blue, the former to denote actual extent of the flames, the latter for lines of defense. He maps quickly and accurately. A bog to the left will afford a front for Mr. Bozarth’s crew. This creek will do for Mr. Thornberg. Mr. Rodgers can work along the concrete road and dig a trench.

If it were possible to use radio the Colonel could speak directly to the ground crews, as do the navy’s airplanes with vessels. But the Forest Fire Service has a different scheme. Scribbling instructions, the Colonel slips the note into a cylindrical container and signals the pilot. He points to the road indicating an open space.

Forest l'ire prevention still is, however, far behind ordinary urban lire prevention, the Colonel revealed. Whereas the average city expends 50 cents by fire for every 100 dollars worth of property, the rural and forest districts spend 35 cents in maintaining service and lose 1.50 dollars for every 100 dollars’ worth of property. “Still this year we burned off only half the amount that our best prevention year in the last, 20 had shown,” he added. “You can get an idea of what wc have done in stopping fires by the 10 and the five-year averages. During n 10-vear period we averaged StiO fires a year which burned over an average of 101 square miles with an annual loss of 210,000 dollars. In the last five years our averages have been 1091 fires —3OO more a year—but only 50.5 square miles in area, and with losses averaging only 75.0U0 dollars a year. “There are some exciting moments while flying the forest fire patrol. Once wc tried landing in a field. Suddenly a pine tree loomed up and the next thing we heard a snap. We’d cut the top right off it. If that tree had been a bit tougher I guess it would have nosed us over. But things like that are all in the day’s work. Wc hit and then wo kept going.”