Whakatane Forest Rangers Attend Fire Course

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 14, Issue 32, 31 August 1949, Page 5

Whakatane Forest Rangers Attend Fire Course

Several forest rangers of the Whakatane Board Mills are at present attending an advanced course in forest fire fighting at the Rotorua Forestry Training Centre. Because of the huge amount of damage that can be done to New Zealand’s forests by fire State and private forests are linked in a single national fire organisation. Fires do not recognise any individual owners and for this reason the advanced course is open to all. It is sometimes said that a long, hot, dry summer—fire weather as foresters call it—in Europe and North America is followed by a similar bad fire season in New Zealand and Australia.

Another way, of looking at it is that the seasonal variation of rainfall tends to be greater than the annual variation. So far this year, there has been more rain than usual, and if the rule holds, a dry summer seems more likely than an unusually heavy total rainfall. Fire Plan Preparation

The rangers attending the fire school in Rotorua will study the preparation of fire plans to meet different degrees of emergency, taking into consideration the local conditions of each individual forest. Also studied will be fire weather, hazard reduction, radio communication, and the U.S. Forest Service’s ‘one lick” method of constructing fire lines to “corall” fires, the handling of pumps, quad fire engines and water carriers.

All the rangers attending the fire school have had long experience in dealing with forest fires, and most of them are the O.C.’s of fire control in large forests. This course will be followed by a fire course for forest foremen next month.