This story was published in the Feb. 8, 1952, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.
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Washington, Feb. 7 —(AP)— The forest service is turning the air plane into a workhorse for fire detection and control.
C. A. Gustafson, forest service fire control chief, reports planes flew 12,632 hours on 8,878 forest service flights last year.
The conventional type plane and helicopters transported 436 tons of supplies by parachute.
Items carried by air include fire fighting supplies, food, tractors, bridges and short wave (walkie talkie) radio sets.
Spray Forests
Aside from fire control work, planes are used to spray insect-ridden forests, to reseed burned-over timberland, and for other purposes.
When the fire hazard rises and lightning threatens dry forests, planes fly regular patrols, helping lookouts posted on mountain peaks to watch for telltale smoke spirals.
Fire fighting crews are flown in large planes from city airports to landing strips nearest the fire.
Jumpers On Scene
When a fire is spotted in a remote area which couldn’t be reached in a hurry to groundmen, the forest service’s spectacular parachuting smokejumpers are rushed to the scene to put out the blaze or slow its progress until help arrives.
Foresters say the use of airplanes has saved many millions of dollars worth of timber by making it possible to control fires rapidly — and every minute counts when you’re fighting a forest fire.
They say crews averaged only 2½ miles an hour getting to fires in roadless areas early this century, compared with more than 100 miles an hour last year.
Comparative Figures
Comparative figures are cited for the region comprising Montana, Northern Idaho and parts of Washington and South Dakota. The average annual fire loss there between 1905 and 1930 was 252,000 acres, against 8,888 acres from 1940 to 1950.
Gustafson gives the smokejumpers much credit for keeping the fire loss low in the Montana-Idaho-Washington-South Dakota region during the last decade.
Fires in the 30-million acre region burned only 865 acres in 1951, when large areas were scorched elsewhere.
Most of the forest service’s 257 smokejumpers work in the region, about 150 headquarter at Missoula, Mont. The rest are at Idaho City and McCall, Idaho; Illinois Valley, Ore., and Intercity airport, Lake Chelan, Wash.
Between May and July some jumpers are transferred from Missoula to Deming, N. M., to work in the Gila forest, which has a million-acre roadless area.
Smokejumpers made 1,045 leaps on 325 fires last year.
Gustafson figures they saved about $865,000 in fire fighting money which would have been spent in they had not been on the job. This doesn’t count the millions of dollars worth of timber saved.
