4. This county, State, and Federal cooperation in men and money has also resulted in several important firebreaks serving to protect communities lying in the forest and brushland areas. Not only will these firebreaks serve to keep structural fires originating within the populated centers from entering into the surrounding watersheds and forested areas, but they will also stop the fires originating in the unpopulated areas from entering the protected communities. Citizen forestry study group sponsored firebreaks now adequately protect the communities of Harrison Park, La Cresta, Pine Hills, and Pine Valley.

STATE OF CALIFORNIA'S CONTRIBUTION TO THE PROGRAM

From the California State Legislature our citizens forestry group has secured greatly increased appropriations to the California Division of Forestry to provide more adequate watershed protection and forest and brush fire prevention in San Diego County. The State now has a protection budget of $811,664 in San Diego County. This last fiscal year the State spent an estimated $100,000 from an emergency fund for forest fire suppression in the county. In addition, the State now has 180 men in State forestry honor camps working on forestry projects, contributing some $249,600 annually in labor valued at only $8 per day. The study group has been helpful in securing a fourth State forestry camp for our county, which will bring the number of prison laborers to 240. The State also allots $36,310 yearly for the protection of private and State lands within the Cleveland National Forest.

MORE ADEQUATE FEDERAL FINANCING IS URGENTLY NEEDED

Our citizens forestry study group of San Diego County has repeatedly requested the United States Forest Service, the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of the Budget, and the Congress to provide an adequate level of fire protection for our own Cleveland National Forest. Our requests are based on the planned needs of the forest as presented by the supervisor of the Cleveland. These needs have been studied by the group and have been determined as essential to the results we seek. They are in line with the level of protection we ask and have received from the local responsible city, county, and State agencies. They have been coordinated with the needs of 3 other national forests through our watershed fire council of southern California, of which our group is 1 of 4 constituent members.

We note that the Cleveland's fire-protection budget for the current 1957-58 fiscal year again appropriates $177,000 for use in San Diego County which constitutes approximately two-thirds of the Cleveland National Forest. And we stress the fact that in this last year the emergency fire-fighting fund of the Forest Service has been called upon to pay approximately $666,500 for fire suppression in this county, since 85 percent of all Cleveland fires this past year have occurred here. An additional fund of $61,000 was appropriated by the governmental agencies to reseed the two large burns of the current year, the Pine Mountain and the Inaja forest-fire burns.

The group is pleased that the Department of Agriculture and the Congress have met our requests for additional funds in part. The Cleveland National Forest was given its pro rata share of the supplemental appropriations for fiscal years 1955, 1956, 1957, and 1958. We have seen these funds put to wise use in stronger fire prevention and initial attack. The man-caused fires dropped from 44 in 1953 to 27 in 1954, to 17 in 1955, but zoomed to 39 in 1956. Burned acreage for the same years dropped from 10,675 acres to 6,403 acres, to 363 acres, and then went up to 39,964 last year. Two large fires, one caused by a falling military plane and the other by a subnormal Indian boy, contributed to the greater acreage burned, and the staggering suppression cost.

We know of instances where fires were controlled this year under extremely hazardous conditions by the initial-attack crews due to the increased manpower, where heretofore similar fires have escaped to cause losses and fire-fighting costs that ran to the hundreds of thousands of dollars. We firmly believe that this outstanding record in fire prevention and suppression is due in part to the supplemental funds provided. I say, in part, because I again would like to call your attention to the local participation I have mentioned and which we know must also be adequate if the Forest Service is to do a good job of watershed protection and the prevention of forest and brush fires on the Cleveland National Forest.

We had a bad year in 1956 on the Cleveland National Forest which proves that the present level of protection is still far from adequate for acceptable results year after year. While fire prevention and initial-attack forces have been substantially strengthened, sound fire-control planning shows that weak spots still remain. Fire-control roads are inadequate and unsafe in places. Quarters for fire-control personnel are also inadequate and substandard in places. Fire preplanning should be extended to all of the more critical watersheds. Year-long financing for foremen, drivers, and prevention aids would provide the know-how and manpower to predetermine fire-control lines, water sources, heliports, and firebreaks on the ground before a fire occurs.

There are jobs to be done in fire research and the improvement in communications and equipment. Fire-protection salaries must be uniform between agencies to prevent injustices. We are still in great need of a year-round strong fire force to meet the dreaded Santa Ana conditions that occur frequently during the so-called off season and maintain a corps of fire-fighting experts to train new people in scientific fire protection.

Our request of 4 years ago for an annual appropriation of an additional $312,000 for the Cleveland National Forest remains imperative. Our group urges all concerned to budget and appropriate not only the increases of fiscal years 1955, 1956, and 1957, but the additional funds required to meet the full estimated amount for adequate protection. This sum is required annually for a period of 10 years to enable the Cleveland National Forest to reach a satisfactory level of watershed protection and prevention of forest and brush fires.

To properly represent the feelings of our group in this matter of increased appropriations, I must state that the members are not happy with the high budgets of governments. In this instance, however, we are not at all happy at the excessive costs and losses resulting from forest fires not being prevented or escaping from control when small. Our experience and our studies have given us the firm belief that only through adequate fire preparedness can we achieve watershed protection at the least cost, and eliminate the recurrence of such tragic fire losses as those of the Inaja Forest fire of November 1956.

Total, all sources, expenditures for watershed protection and forest and brush fire prevention in San Diego County for 1956-57

Total, all sources, expenditures for watershed protection and forest and brush fire prevention in San Diego County for 1956-57-Continued

The CHAIRMAN. It would be appreciated, Mr. Sarafian, if you will identify yourself by name, address, and whom you represent. We are trying to limit presentations to 5 minutes in order to allow a little time for the committee members to ask questions.

STATEMENT OF ARMEN SARAFIAN, CHAIRMAN, PASADENA AREA COMMUNITYWIDE COMMITTEE ON CONSERVATION

Mr. SARAFIAN. Thank you very much, gentlemen. It is a real pleasure to be here.

My name is Armen Sarafian, Pasadena, Calif. I am administrator in the Pasadena city schools and also chairman of the Communitywide Committee on Conservation.

This morning we heard from some of the people about the damage that teen-agers are doing with their vandalism and maliciousness, and so on, in starting some fires. This Communitywide Committee on Conservation is concerned about that sort of thing. The committee consists of 100 members, 60 of whom are civic leaders interested in conservation and 40 of whom represent the elementary, junior, and senior high schools and junior college of the Pasadena area. Our committee has many chairmen of conservation activities from service and civic groups and from such organizations as the Audubon and Sierra Clubs. It meets once a month for the purpose of

1. Evaluating our school and community programs of conservation education;

2. Joining together in the writing and preparation of booklets and films on our San Gabriel Mountains; and

3. Finding ways of instilling greater conservation-mindedness in our youth.

We are vitally concerned with what happens to our San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains, and we have undertaken a number of very careful studies in relation to it. We have heard people from Los Angeles County Arboretum tell us about fire-resistant plants. We have gone out to San Dimas Experimental Forest and looked at the studies going on at that place. We have heard from people in the United States Forest Service; we have heard from eminent professors in biology in our area on flora and fauna, and we have also had conservation bus trips for teachers and for citizens as we have gone out to various mountain areas to study them carefully.

Those of us who are native sons and daughters of southern California can remember vividly the consequences to our valleys when fires denude our mountain playgrounds. We recall such tragic occurrences as the 1934 La Crescenta flood which was the aftermath of a burn of the protective cover at upper elevations. We know the importance of our chaparral in retaining the topsoil, the rocks, and the debris that would otherwise plunge mercilessly into the valleys below, wreaking death and destruction to our heavily populated foothill towns and cities.

We know this chaparral is indigenous to the area, as far as these studies we have made, it does not appear to us that any other known grass or herb at this time can take the place of the chaparral as a protector of the mountainsides, as a preventer of topsoil erosion and floods. This is made up of a number of tough evergreen plants peculiarly suited to the dry winters, and they must utilize for growth those relatively short periods in the spring, fall, or, really, at other times of the year when there is enough moisture and heat at the same time to permit plant life to develop. Up to this day it just does not appear that other plants can do the kind of thing chaparral is doing in our own particular mountains.

We have been told that the soil on our rugged mountains is perched at a more precipitous angle than can be found on mountains in other parts of the United States. We have learned, too, that it consists mostly of decomposed granite and therefore is very unstable. After a severe fire, such as the recent one near Morris Dam, one can actually hear the loose soil rattling down the mountainside even when it is dry.

If you have just a little bit of water, you can imagine what that would do.

We are indeed fortunate that this loose decomposed stuff is held on our steep mountain slopes by the root structure of our elfin forest. Without this thick tangle of natural cover our costly dams, reservoirs, water spreading grounds, and flood control channels would soon be filled with silt. As taxpayers we cannot tolerate the expensive cleanup and rebuilding that will be necessary if our officials fail to capitalize on nature's plan for holding this soil in place.

In these seasons of extreme drought, we are more conscious than ever of the value of the watersheds in the mountain playgrounds in our own backyard. Even the slightest drop of water is an economic necessity to our parched southland. Protection of our elfin forest, therefore, is sine quo non to survival. Every man, woman, and child in the Los Angeles metropolitan area is tremendously affected by actions relating to our San Gabriel Mountains, and that is the reason our Pasadena Community Committee on Conservation is so vitally concerned about the outcomes of your hearings.

We heard a number of things this morning about proposals to burn off the cover. We were kind of surprised at these proposals. It is the same thing as eliminating traffic accidents by eliminating cars, and you will not have any; eliminate juvenile delinquency by getting rid of all teen-agers-you will not have any.

The city of San Francisco had a number of very critical fires over the past century of history. That seemed to be a cycle arrangement until they got adequate fire protection in the city of San Francisco. No person in his right mind would propose that we go into the city of San Francisco and eliminate all of the combustible materials, all the buildings, and so on, that will burn. Yet it seems to me some of the proposals are in that vein.

In our committee sessions we have examined the work of the United States Forest Service in giving care and protection to our Angeles National Forest. We are greatly impressed by the quality of our forest service personnel. We also admire their desire in using the latest and best means of quelling fires. A number of incipient holocausts this past summer were snuffed out by aerial tankers, chemicals, and "helitack" operations. Some fires in virtually inaccessible areas were confined to less than 40 acres, whereas a few years ago they would have burned and burned and burned.

One of the most devastating fires-because of its potential menace during the rainy season-was restricted during the month of September to a burned area of about 2,500 acres. Tragic as this loss is it could easily have devastated many thousands of additional acres. Some of us recall the destructive fire of 1924 in the same area when, over a period of several weeks, flames denuded a far greater territory as they leaped into wild, steep hinterlands almost to the desert.

Modern and efficient means of fire fighting have much promise for the welfare of our elfin forests. The problem is that there are not enough facilities and manpower to give the year-round protection so urgently needed during the dry Santa Ana windy seasons of September to February. There does not seem to be a sufficiently thorough understanding of the factors that make fire fighting so difficult in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino ranges such as

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