THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, January 13, 1939. THE FOREST FIRE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23706, 13 January 1939, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, January 13, 1939. THE FOREST FIRE

For a week or more a large area of the Victorian countryside has been a raging inferno. Forest fires, described as the worst in the State’s history, have devastated thousands of acres of bush, scrub and pastoral lands, destroyed townships, and, most dreadful toll of all, have cost the lives of men, women and children. This, in New Zealand as in Australia, is the season of greatest fire risk. But, whereas in the Dominion the summer months have, in most parts, been characterised by a quite abnormal rainfall, the fire danger in a majority of the Australian States has been magnified by conditions of semi-drought and intense heat. For weeks past in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia, for instance, the heavens have been as brass, the only relief obtainable being from occasional thunder-storms of varying violence. In such circumstances it is not surprising that fires, eluding the vigilance of forest patrols, have spread terror among many rural populations. In Victoria the visitation has been on an appalling scale, and even yet, after days of heroic effort on the part of fire-fighters, working against the additional handicap of mid-summer heat, the end is not in sight. Scorching winds have fanned the flames, causing them to leap the natural barriers left as lanes of protection in the State timber reserves, or rushing them across the open grazing lands where the grass and scrub are like tinder. What human effort can do to stay the progress of many conflagrations is being done, but it would seem that only the intervention of Nature will suffice to kill the fires before their consequences reach still more distressing proportions.

The sympathy of New Zealanders will go out to the sufferers in Victoria and South Australia, where the most tragic toll has been taken in human life and property. The past week will indeed be a black one in the annals of those two States. Victoria especially possesses, or did possess before the holocaust, very great forest resources, approximately 5,000,000 acres being under growth in State forests and timber and fuel reserves. Compared with that acreage South Australia’s total of a little more than a-quar.ter of a million acres dedicated as State forests seems relatively unimportant, that area being the smallest of the State-controlled resources. New South Wales has the largest area of forest reservations, with Queensland second, Western Australia third, Victoria fourth, and Tasmania fifth. A most disquieting feature of the Victorian outbreaks is that in at least two districts, at Woodend and Mount Macedon, the fires are believed to have been deliberately kindled, probably by holders of grazing licences, with the object of encoui'aging a spring of grass later in the year. Experience on this occasion has most shockingly demonstrated the criminal folly of such actions, and it may be anticipated that there will ensue a public demand for the harshest punishment for any detected in the commission of an offence so nearly approaching to outrage.

In New Zealand the summer so far has been marred by grave outbreaks of fire in timber areas in Centra] Hawke’s Bay, as a consequence of which the Minister of Internal Affairs has issued a timely 'warning to motorists, campers, and others to pay the strictest regard to those commonsense rules of conduct which alone can ensure reasonable immunity from the fire menace. Last season, which, it will be recalled, was a season of prolonged dryness though not, according to forestry officials, of intense hazard, there were nevertheless serious fires in the Wellington and Rotorua conservancies which caused the loss of 40,000,000 board feet of mature milling timber, of which the State loss was estimated at 17,000,000 board feet on an area of 900 acres. Forests do not grow in a night, and losses of such magnitude, trifling though

they are in comparison with those of Victoria’s experience in the past week, can be ill-afforded in a country where there is earnest concentration on the problem of conserving and extending the timber stands. But, transcending any consideration of material loss, there is the human risk involved in the momentary carelessness as a result of which the bush or scrub fire may be set on its destructive course. The present Australian lesson is surely too terrible not to impress itself deeply on the consciousness of all who use the out-of-doors.