Design of Transportation Plans to Meet the Fire Control Problem in Southern California

This article describes the principles and procedure developed for the application of protection transportation planning to the chaparral territory of southern California. Due to the dense and highly inflammable green brush, the precipitous topography, and the climate, fire control here becomes a difficult problem, taxing all the resources and highest ingenuity of the Forest Service and other protection agencies. In spite of the difficulties, the tremendous wealth in orange groves and urban developments within the shadow of the chaparral slopes demands complete maintenance of existing water supplies from the watersheds. Often it is also directly menaced by floods of debris when such areas have been denuded by fire. The project here described represents one phase of the comprehensive plans undertaken by National Forest Region 5 toward meeting the problem.