Fire Stops?

I lived in eastern Pennsylvania from 1961 until 1970 as a youth.  I did a lot of hiking and camping in the Appalacians and do not recall any fire stops.  There were rows up the side of the mountains where the trees were cut down, however these were utility easements and not fire stops.

Out west they are called fire

Out west they are called fire breaks, and look like dirt roads.  They've been around since at least wwII out in CA.  I've never seen anything like that here in Tennessee, or anywhere else in the Appalachians.

While driving down Rt 15 in

While driving down Rt 15 in southern-central NY and central PA, I have seen "columns" of trees cut down, with no utiltiies, or evidence thereof ever existing coming down the mountain side. Then again, my friend could have been wrong.

Ken L.

Mike, they are actually fireroads, not fire breaks.

Out west the forsest service or the state or county maintains fire roads in rugged mountain areas.  If a forest fire breaks out, they need to be able to get fire fighting equipment into the area where the fire is, without needing to take the time to build roads into the fire area.  The narrow dirt roads don't really function as fire breaks.  At a children's camp that I work at on a volunteer basis during the summer months at a boy's camp the U.S. Forrest Service rangers came to the camp one afternoon with one of their fire trucks and talked to the boys about how they fight forrest fires  Talking with the rangers afterwards I found out that the reason they leave someone to keep watch after a fire is out, looking for "hot spots" is that when a tree burns, the fire often goes down into the root system.  It may burn through the roots to the roots of a neighboring tree, and then suddenly a tree that is many yards away from where the fire was suddenly bursts into flame.  Often the fire will burn the roots of the tree that burned, move to a root of a neighboring tree, but not do much more than burn enough root to get to another tree and skip along and suddenly a tree a hundred yards away from where the fire was burned bursts into flame.  An 8-12 foot wide swath of dirt will stop a grass fire, but if the fire is in the trees, it is much more difficult to stop.

I live in NW Virginia 21 miles from the West Virgina Border.

Through out the Applications there are people living on both side of the range in the different Valleys. The Fire Breaks that you see have three functions

1 it's a Fire road to gain access to forest fires if needed.

2. It acts as a first break it slow fires.

3 almost every one is a Power Line & Telephone pole route through the mountains so the power companies and telephone companies can reach downed lines or troubled satellite tower repair routes.

According to The state of Virginia Allegheny power company they have been building these access roads since 1945 as more and more people returning from the 2nd world war bought property in these mountains they built more and more of these access roads and Power Tower access areas to bring electricity to the masses

These roads are usually 60 yards wide and run through out Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, & Maryland.

Hope this helps

Dan

Too much excitement...

Hot spots?  Ugh... My neighbor did a bunch of logging a few years back and being quite the pyromaniac he felt obliged to deal with slash piles the way he deals with trimmings from his 60 acres of filbert and walnut trees - he tossed a match on them (actually he poured on a gallon of diesel first...).  Well, the slash piles burned alright - for awhile my driveway looked like it was in a war zone.  After a few days the burning was done...

About a month later I'm looking out the back window down at the creek and the handful of trees the forest service insisted the loggers leave next to it. And there's a little column of smoke coming up somewhere by a couple of trees - about what comes out of a barbecue when grilling a steak. I watch it for a minute trying to see if someone is down there with a camp fire or grill - it's a nice spot for a picnic, or used to be before all the trees got mowed down. The smoke is slowly increasing and I don't see any sign of people. So I call my logging/pyromaniac neighbor and tell him his slash burning is about to burn the mountain down if he doesn't scurry on down there. Then I call the fire department which is substantially further away.

A minute later the neighbor shows up with a big blue Ford tractor with a big bucket loader on the front bouncing along about as fast as it will go. He drives down into the creek and scoops up a bucket of water which he dumps on the spot where flames are now just starting to appear. There's a big cloud of steam and the flames disappear. One more bucket of water later and he starts digging around looking for hot spots and drops another bucket of water in there.

I'm glad he had the sense not to torch the slash piles on the other side of the creek where they're next to the forest that didn't get logged (with out a creek bed between the slash burning and the forest)! I'm also glad I was home and happened to look out the window and see the smoke before the sucker really got going!!!!

The fire dept showed up just in time to see the third  bucket of water getting dumped. They poked around a bit, and pronounced the fire out.

Too much excitement...

Charlie