Logging slash flammability

Abstract

Some of the most disastrous forest fires in North American history burned in slash left from logging and land clearing. In the era before organized fire control, the names Miramichi, Peshtigo, Hinckley, and Cloquet stand for millions of acres blackened and thousands of lives snuffed out. More recently the Half Moon Fire in Montana, the Tillamook Fire in Oregon, the Forks Fire in Washington, and the Dudley Lake Fire in Arizona, to name only a few, owed their irresistibility to the slash fuels that fed them. Over much of the West logging slash is now the most hazardous forest fuel, and it threatens to remain so for an indefinite period.

Citation

Fahnestock, George R. 1960. Logging slash flammability. Res. Pap. 58 [Pre-1963]. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. 70 p.