Forest Rangers Are Holding A Course

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 3, 2 October 1950, Page 3

Forest Rangers Are Holding A Course

Twenty forest rangers from al] parts of New Zealand have been attending a fire protection course at Whakarewarewa Forest Institute. The State Forest Service has provided the instructors but the rangers come from both State and private forests.

The men are learning the strategy of fire-fighting. They are not concerned so much with tactics to be used when a big bush or scrub fire breaks out as with, in the first place, seeing what they can do to prevent it. Their second consideration is to plan for an emergency. Fire protection is ■ a comprehensive job. Under the Rural and Forest Fire Act, 1947, fire officers, in many areas, have wide powers, although they prefer not to use them.

The fire course is training the rangers in ways of doing the same work by educating the public,' obtaining their co-operation and showing them how they can publicise the fire danger. If they can do this successfully, they should not have to resort to emergency orders. The fire course is part of the work of the State Forest Service. They are concerned with preventing fires everywhere not merely in the pine forests they control. If fire should break out they have prepared definite plans which allot battle stations to everyone. All workers know instantly what to do and the officer in charge is freed from the worry and bustle of on-the-spot decisions to concentrate on major problems of fire fighting.

With the necessary organisation and modern radio communications, the State Forest Service has evolved and adapted new methods of attacking fires. One of the most important is an American . importation—the one lick system. This calls for large gangs of trained workers divided into groups clearing trees, digging lines and burning off to put a fire break through a burning forest at a walking pace. Each man uses his axe, or only once, or, in the original American, “takes one lick before walking on and doing it again.” When a big unit marches through a forest it can cut lines much faster than in the old static way. The State Forest Service has Iso received a number of • volunteers from would-be. fire jumpers, who would like to be ; parachuted in to stop a bush fire. But, though this is a common practice in America, the New Zealand bush is much easier to get into and a parachutist group is not needed. “We think we can stop fires with these tactics,” said one- fire officer recently, “but if the public gives us their co-operation we wall not have to use them, and we would prefer that.”