BUSH FIRES IN CANADA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 18, 15 July 1911, Page 5

BUSH FIRES IN CANADA.

CORPSE-STREWN STREETS. By Cable—Press Association—Copyright. Ottawa, July 13. The victims of the fire are believed to include two hundred employees from the 'Dome Mine, who were penned in the shafts. Corpses strew the streets in South Porcupine. Many prospectors' bodies were found. Fifteen were driven into a lake in their efforts to escape the flames, but all perished. Six hundred inhabitants of Cochrane escaped by a. Telief train before the town was destroyed. Part of the town of Lisdale was destroyed, and 4000 residents in the neighborhood escaped in a relief train. The flames were only checked when houses were dynamited. The town of Kelso has been abandoned to the flames.

A relief fund has been opened in Toronto.

The fire in the Porcupine district is the worst in tlic history of Canada. The death list totals over 300, and the, loss of property amounts to many million pounds. A great wall of flames swept the mining camps, closing in with startling suddenness. In Golden City men who refused to fight the flames were forced to act at the revolver's point, and frenzied foreigners who attempted to rush the boats on which the women and children were being removed to safety were held back by armed men.

SAVING THE FORESTS. SOME AMERICAN DIFFICULTIES. The districts in Canada affected bv the fires are in the neighborhood of Calgary, and lie along the foot-hills of the Rockies. Cochrane lies 22 miles west of Calgary, among the foot-hills and river "benches" at the. base of the ranges. The traveller here passes large horse, sneep, and cattle ranches, and beyond the settlement are some coal pits. The Porcupine Hills lie to the south of Cochrane.

The enormous conflagrations that are of frequent occurrence in the United States forests, and the colossal annual fire losses, have always been a matter of wonder to Europeans, and the unusually great devastations of last year called forth considerable comment in the European press. In a recent number of Woehenchrift the subject of forest fires in North Ameriica is discussed by Professor Deckert, of Frankfort, a distinguished forester, who has travelled all over the I'nited States, and is acquainted by personal experience -'* li the conditions of which he speaks. I'rc'-ssor Deckert does not take altogether n customary view of the annual Iras bein'.- almost entirely chargeable to natural car'l"ssness and wastefulness of super. 1 bundan- riches, but candidly states his conviction l''at both the extent of the fores'." and c' : niatic conditions render it quii'.' impo>-' :! ble to protect the forests as tliev are nrotected in Ocrmany and middle Europe generally.