RADIO BATTLES AGAINST BUSH-FIRES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 350, 8 March 1946, Page 6

RADIO BATTLES AGAINST BUSH-FIRES

es T the moment the wind is nor-west to west; if the humidity recorded . ‘this morning drops, it might be dangerous: again." Having jotted down this information from Rotorua by telephone-and a lot more data like it-an officer of the State Forest. Service fire-fighting department in Wellington settled down, between calls, to explain some of. the methods used in New Zealand for forest fire prevention and suppression. "These calls," he said, "are. coming through all day, and at night they come to my home. We’re pretty busy people these days." But there was time for him to talk a little about the battle-front, with emphasis on the wide use of radio. When the service starts out to fight a forest fire, it organises ‘itself like ‘a fully-equipped army, issuing its ‘directives from headquarters, and ‘controls every front. There is much more in it than just sending out fire-engines and gangs of beaters. Radio, the Army, Navy and Air Force, and the Weather Office, have all co-operated in fighting recent outbreaks, using all the available modern mechanical aids, and have helped to minimise the spread of destruction. When a forest fire races forward on a broad front, it can only be contained, at best, by flank attacks and backburning. Hence the imperatives in forest fire control are preparedness and immediate suppression. And that is where the National Broadcasting Service comes in. Man Makes the Fires Practically all fires are man-made. We hear on the radio constant references. to causes-cigarette butts and matches carelessly thrown away, billy fires left smouldering by so-called bush-lovers, and even by those whose livelihood is bound up with the bush. The NBS mentions, at intervals during bad fire weather, the implications of carelessness in the destruction of. valuable bush, the destruction of soil cover, and its effect on erosion, the despoiling of natural beauty, and the unassessable damage to future timber crops. Broadcasts of weather reports indicate danger periods and an elaboration of these forecasts is made possible by firehazard records from widely dispersed stations in forested areas. Such records collected by Forest Service stations provide the accessory data needed to provide fire weather forecasts. So the. State Forest Service, the Weather Office, and the NBS work in close co-operation. Radio is used, too, as a medium through which preventive measures can be taken in emergencies, and it gives special emphasis to the need for extreme care in hazardous regions. Radio protection in the field is provided by a network of short-wave stations in major forested parts, for a telephone line might itself be destroyed by fire. Mosquito Network "Transceivers," so named because they send as well as receive, are installed in fire look-out stations as an adjunct to the telephone, and are also contained in mobile fire-weather stations, in trucks and patrol planes. In suppressing a fire, radio controls the fight over a wide front, using the

mobile transceivers and aircraft patrols for reporting to the established headquarters. So additional forces can be mobilised when and where required. When a fire call comes from a look:out, the information is telephoned to the headquarters for the area. At Kaingaroa, for instance, there is a pet-work of lookouts which record every fire and give a compass bearing on it. At Kaingaroa, too, there is a large transceiver which is in contact with Rotorua, the administrative headquarters for the region. The mobile unit goes to the scene and, if the fire is a big one, the forest staff, which has been on, call during hazardous times, follows as a fighting gang. Aerial patrols constantly in touch by radio, direct the work of the army and the transceivers, in effect, So-eesigete the battle on all fronts. The largest exotic forest in Now Zealand is at Kaingaroa, where there are 344,000 acres with 260,000 acres of trees. When we went to press there had been no reports of damage there, although fire had been up to the boundary. But when all the damage in various areas is added up, the total is appalling from the point of view of the forests’ future. Preventive Measures The State Forest Service has over 20 stations recording fire hazard conditions throughout New Zealand. All information from them is set out on graphs, like meteorological office data. ind direction, force, humidity and temperature are all taken into account. For testing humidity three squares of timber, dowelled together, and known as "sticks," are used. They are exposed to outside weather and weighed regularly to give an indication of inflammability. Complete rainfall records are kept and the Weather Office plays its role in giving an over-all picture of the conditions in areas not covered by State Forest stations. It also endeavours to predict conditions. In the central North Island district, north of National Park, a large region

of millable timber had no meteorological cover, so the Weather Office, at very short notice in the recent emergency, supplied two mobile stations -which recorded weather conditions. Their records were transmitted by radio to Ohakea headquarters and Ohakea passed them on by teleprinter to the Weather Office, which was in touch with the State Forest Service. The headquarters of the fire hazard prediction service is in Fitzherbert Terrace, Wellington, where continuous records are taken of progress on all fire fronts. These are used partly to advise the public, through the radio and the press, and also to arrange for additional men and equipment to be sént where they are most required. The men and equipment come largely from the Army and Air Force.

In the recent blaze at Taupo the Public Works Department played an important part both with equipment and manpower. But during an emergency the State Forest Service can ask anyone for assistance. In fact, in places*\where there is only a small staff, manpower comes almost wholly from the settlers of the neighbourhood, who realise that what they do in fire-fighting is to their own advantage. Recently a naval party from Waiouru was taken post-haste to Taupo and assisted in majntaining lines of communication. Radar, said to be capable of recording sounds from the moon and the sun, is one of the few modern devices not yet used in forest fire-fighting in New Zealand. Officers of the Department say that at the moment they do not see how it can be applied; but one never knows.