The Buildup of the Fire Control Infrastructure
Fire suppression became more mechanized after the Korean War (Pyne 1997). Equipment such as radios, bulldozers and aircraft came into more common use in firefighting (Davis 1959). Fire suppression and control became more organized, with clear lines of authority and a greater number of professionally trained firefighters staffing wildfire events (Davis 1959). In the South, the capacities of the state fire agencies grew and largely replaced the private fire fighting organizations of the private forest associations.
With the establishment of 2 important research institutions in 1958, fire research began to play an important role in guiding fire management in the South. The first of 3 US Forest Service fire research laboratories was established in Macon, GA as a cooperative venture with the Georgia Forestry Commission. It was the world’s first laboratory devoted solely to the study of forest fires (U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service 2004). Tall Timbers Research Station, a private institution, was established near Tallahassee, FL in the same year. Through the inspiration and leadership of Herbert Stoddard, fire ecology became the organizing research principle of Tall Timbers (Engstrom 2004). The Tall Timbers fire ecology conferences initiated in 1966 by Ed Komarek continue today and they provide a forum in which academicians and practitioners from around the world exchange information about the effects of fire on a wide variety of ecosystems.
Even as fire management capacity developed, wildfires continued and they continue today. Between 1966 and 1975, the 13 states included in the US Forest Service’s Southern Region experienced 56,897 wildfires (Doolittle 1977). Fires in Georgia, Florida and Alabama accounted for 43% of the fires during that time period. During the early 1970s some fires in the Florida Everglades grew to 50,000 acres in size (Florida Division of Emergency Management 2005). In the late 1970’s, the Southern Forest Experiment Station reported the average number of wildfires in southern forests to be at 70,000 per year, burning an average of about 1 million acres (U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service 1991).
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