The light burners proposed to "control" the
destructiveness of the deliberate firing by burning the
woods in the spring or fall when sufficiently moist to
prevent the fire from seriously injuring either old timber
or young trees. A careful study of the area ... shows that
such control amounts to little or nothing. The light
burners ignore the rapidity with which ... sunlight
in warm weather dries up the litter in the pine woods. A
south slope will be so dry as to make any fire exceedingly
hot and destructive before a north slope will burn at all.
Areas which will burn but lightly and irregularly early in
the morning will flare up and consume in the most
approved fashion by mid-afternoon. The moisture
following light spring or fall rains often disappears so
rapidly that the period of "safe" burning is a matter of
hours, not of days. Actually to burn the western pineries,
as the advocates of this theory propose to burn them,
would, if it could be done at all, entail a cost for effective