HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1960-11-17, Page 3Firefighting
Graves 1Up To -Date
Net toil army ye7Us age, lith
in the rural region was cor'r::-
ta aiy fraught with the threat of
fire. It still is, of course, but
.mno,ue and methods available
nm.e only to urban folks ate
now pretty generally used. In-
deed, a' trained city fireman to-
day would probably be most in-
efficient if somebody suddenly
asked hint' to pot Dalt a country
blaze. -
I slaw this happen once -...a
really big fire concentrated
equipment 'from many different
cltior and towns, and the crack
engine and crew frons Central
Fire Station in the City of Port-
land arrived at full tilt out in
the hinterland and was told to
pump from a well. They might
just. as well have stayed at home.
Their axes- and shovels and men
carne in handy, but the engine
wasn't rioted for our kind of
fir.•
Lang. ago a neighbor crawled
to our place in a blizzard, be-
cau;e we had a telephone, and
said his chimney was on fire.
We called, not the firehouse, but
the telephone operator. The fire-
house didn't have tt telephone
either. She said she'd see what
silo could do, and after a time
she located somebody who Would
rine the bell. When the men
gathered, they decided the Model
T truck with its hose lines
couldn't push through the drifts.
Muth later, a couple of men
Dame, wading hip -deep, with
buckets over their arms, but the
fire had been put out by salt
thrc:wn on the embers in the
stove.
Those days are wholly gone.
Wittier roads are kept open, and
the newer engines bring at least
800 gallons of water with them.
The alarm system is better. We
still have a "volunteer" com-
pany, but the men keep in shape,
are organized well, and are
ready to roll promptly. Once, a
farm home that "caught was
considered doomed, and the men
would try to save the barn.
times they saved the cellar, too.
:Hut today, four or five miles
Means but a few more minutes,
and engines can arrive with
country -fire equipment and stop
a blaze as well as they can in
the village.
Wood •fires, once e violent
country experience, have be -
FASCINATION - India's Ja-
waharlal Nehru gazes at "Cra-
dle Song," Theodore J. Rozak's
work on display in New York's
Guggenheim Museum. T h e
prime minister, taking a break
from his U.N. activities, said
he was "perfectly fascinated"
by the modern works on dis-
play.
(-Anne mtu lr hese to r r rt . iu:r. 'faun
old method. was 10 teeetatible as
Many men 'fes pr),._;ible with
brooms and shovels,and to beat
the Halm s IAA they could.
Pails het e t but only if water
was tomtit, '.19u'r'c' was a tooll.
nique leu:eten as "back -firing"
which oft:.:gin proved ae ttestruc-
tivc: as the original blaze. You
started a second fire in the path
of the first, controlling its down-
wind edge while it was small,
and then when the two met they
burned each other Met. A shift
in the wind could throw every-
thing off and you were wor::e
than before,
Very little public praise comes
far the professional forest -fire
fighter. But he has developed an
organized, efficient system which.
is marc remarkable because of
the wilderness areas in which he
has to move. Maine':, woodlands
-the biggest unbroken stretches
left in the country -are watched
all summer long by keen eyes in
towers. Telephone lines connect
them toother lookouts, and to
base stations. Radio is on day
and night,
Just this summer, a vacation-
ing couple were caught on a lake
by a stiff, bitter wind. They
went ashore to wait it out, and
kindled a fire to dry their
clothes and make a Murch. They
were not on an "authorietd
campsite." Fifteen miles away
on a mountain a forestry warden
spotted their smoke instantly,
telephoned to a camp on the lake
and said, "Thirty yards south of
Gunner's Broolc there's smoke;
will you investigate?" The camp
owner jumped.in his boat, pull-
ed the string on his motor, and
was at the spot just as the kin -
diet stood up with the burnt
match in his hand!
It turned out all right, the in-
cident didn't cause any trouble
-but it shows how quickly and
accurately the fire wardens can
spot a blaze. So much less fre-
quently nowadays, a woods fire
will rage out of control. A
lightning strike will usually be
subdued before it has gone many
feet -by wardens coming with
portable pumps by boat and
truck over woods routes that
they have previously agreed
upon.
Just lately a woods fire burst
up in "Township 17," far up in
the Maine wilderness. Needing
help, the local wardens got it by
radio, and a helicopter hovered
to coordinate the attack, Bull-
dozers are common in lumber
operations now, and it was easy
to converge several -not only to
push bush undergrowth and
strip out barriers, but to cut
roads so pumpers and tanks
could get in. Any oil or gasoline
transport, in an emergency, can
become an auxiliary fire tank.
A farmer's spray tank on a trac-
tor can get over fairly tough
terrain with at least a couple
hundred gallons of water. So it
didn't take long to organize a
defense against this blaze.
But It was a dry time, and the
rich compost of the woodlands
gave the fire a chance to burn
deep into the ground. Such a
smoldering blaze can burst forth
again after you think you've
licked it. The job of the fire-
fighters was to contain the blaze
in as much an area as possible,
and then wait for rain. They
did, and it rained a few nights
later.
Meantime, the Great Northern
Paper Company had moved in
units of a portable lumber camp,
and were feeding and housing
100 men in relays. This savage,
fearsome, uncontrolled fire thus
turned out 16 involve merely a
couple hundred acres or so, and
in spite of its potential it will go
into • the records as -a minor in-
cident. It could have swept furi-
ously across the whole northern
end of the state, and 25 years
ago it would have. -by John
Gould in the Christian Science
Mcnitor.
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Answer elsewhree en th's page
CHEMICAL PLANT EXPLOSION KILLS 11 - Clouds of smoke billow from giant Tennessee East-
man chemical works at Kingsport, Tenn., after one of the plant's building was rocked by on
explosion At least 11 persons were killed and two others were missing and presumed dead.
An Indian botanist has hit
upon a revolutionary and Mex.
pensive method of solving In-
dia's persistent food shortage.
He asserts that soft music
broadcast for a few hours daily
to growing crops can increase
their yield by as much as 100
per cent. The shrill ringing of
an electric bell can jerk the
seeds to germinate faster just as
that sound might jerk a person
out of sleep. But an overdose
will result in the plants wither-
ing away.
G e
These are the conclusions of
Prof, T. C. N, Singh, head of the
botany department of the An-
namalai University, South India,
The professor's assertion is no
idle boast, It is backed by 10
years of intensive research on
the reactions of a variety of
plants to music and sound waves.
Professor Singh's claim is also
backed by agricultural officials
of Pondicherry, the tiny French
settlement (now part of India),
on the east coast of South
India. For the past two years,
the Pondicherry administration
experimented with Professor
Singh's technique to grow paddy
and other crops at a state-owned
farm. The results were astound-
ing - the crop yield increased
from 28 to 61 per cent and the
yield of straw went up as much
as 75 per cent.
h
Professor Singh first got the
idea of trying music to acceler-
ate the growth of plants from
reading Hindu epics and histori-
cal records. The epics speak of
the Hindu deity Krishna playing
the flute in the Brindaban gar-
dens, 70 miles south of Mysore
(South India). As a result, the
gardens blossomed.
The Mogul poet, 'Nilsen, so
history narrates, had such a
great mastery of music that he
once sang an entire garden into
bloom, before his eyes.
h 1: h
Peasants in many parts of
India still observe the custom of
harvest and sowing festivals
when they sing and dance to the
tune of music and drum beats
amidst their fields. While the
simple villagers have no idea of
the significance of these festi-
vals, the professor feels that
their origin might in some way
be connected with the effect of
music on the growth of plants.
Soon after his appointment as
heart of the botany department
of Annamalai University, Pro-
fessor Singh took up his experi-
ments in earnest. He filled his
house and garden with potted
plants and experimented with a
variety of musical tunes to ob-
serve the plants' reactions. First,
he started with seeds. After a
series of experiments he suc-
ceeded in speeding up the ger-
mination of seeds by "exciting
them" with shrill sound waves.
He sowed a variety of seeds in
different beds -- paddy, mustard,
pea, coriander, and others.
A shrill -sounding electric bell,
installed nearby, was then rung
continuously for 30 minutes each
day. The seeds sprouted in one-
third of the time it normally
took for similar "unexcited"
seeds to germinate,
Professor Singh's next task
was to find out how far music
could accelerate the growth and
yield of the plants. He started
with playing various Ind!an.tnu-
sisal tunes to the seedlings,
Overdose of music resulted in
many plants withering. Plants
bombarded with sound waves
from different tunes remained
unaffected as far as their growth
was concerned. But if one par-
ticular tune was played for a
brief period each day, the plants
responded rapidly through fast-
er and healthier growth, Their
yield also showed a proportion-
ate increase..
The professor had to experi-
ment with several tunes before
hitting upon the right one suited
to each plant.
He calfs this technique "musi-
cal dosing" of the plants. "Dosed
plants with the right type of
music" became more lush and
even changed structurally Thus
Mimosa Pudica (sensitive plant)
was found to grow twice as fast
when it was serenaded with a
25 -minute daily dose of soft vio-
lin music continuously over a
four-week period. The seeds
sprouted in half the time if
similar violin music was played
nearby.
The most effective tunes in
these experiments were Indian
classical ones played on the flute,
violin, and-veena (Indian vio-
lin).
The plants also reacted vigor-
ously to dancing. The professor
found that if a dancer performed
an Indian classical dance, with
its stamping, clanging, and
rhythmical music, the plants'
growth pattern and yield in-
creased in the same way as
"musically excited" plants.
Professor Singh made one of
his students peritomy "Ili+rata
Natyanr"-- a particularly color-
ful and vigorous forth of Indian
classical dance -before a group
of petted plants for 30 minutes
a day for a few weeks. The re-
sults Were exceedingly gratify-
ing, he said latrr. writes Sharokh
Sahavala in The Christian
Science Monitor. •
He later branched out into
large-scale experiments under
actual field conditions of his dis-
covery. Loud -speaker, were in-
stalled at strategic points in
growing fields of paddy and
other crops and each day recrird-
ed soft music wag played to
the plants in brief daily doses
over a period of three to four
weeks. As a result the plants
grew faster and their yields
showed an increase of 28 to 60
per cent, compared to crops in
neighboripg fields.
h h
Professor Singh explains the
secret of his technique thus:
The sound waves produced by
musical vibrations bombard the
plants' cell walls. This disturb-
ance tends to agitate the sensi-
tive protoplasm and nucleuee
- contained in the cells and causes
them to react in ways that ac-
celerate their normal and cus-
tomary growth,
v h t,
The adoption of Professor
Singh's technique by the Pondi-
cherry agricultural officials al-
ready has proved successful, but
Delhi's agricultural experts are
still rather skeptical. They have
now invited the professor to
come to Delhi and demonstrate
the effectiveness of his method
at the capital's Agricultural Be-
search Institute.
It will take another two tears
before the experiments in Delhi
can be cunrpleted. Should they
prove a success, Indians would
have really hit upon a sure way
of solving their food shortage.
The government already has
indicated that it would adopt
the technique on a mass scale to
increase the food yield, provided
the Delhi experiments succeed,
All that the government need
do, apart from the normal sup-
ply of chemical fertilizers, is to
provide a village with a- set of
records of soft music and install
a few loud -speakers at strategic
points in the nearby fields. The
peasants can easily -play the
music each day during the ger-
mination and growth period of
the crops and then wait for a
bumper harvest.
These Wagon Trains
Weren't Sm Tough!
Alexander Majors, born in
Franklin Count y, Kentucky,
brought his young family to
western Missouri in 1835, farm-
ed for a decade, then ventured
on a trading expedition to In-
dian villages up the Kaw. The
profits enabled him to buy six
wagons and trade down the San-
ta Fe Trail from Independence,
Missouri, The trip established a
record - ha was back in ninety.
two days, with a five -thousand -
dollar profit.
The feat was the more remark-
able because of the work rules
used by this soft-spoken giant.
There is no record that Majors
ever attended school. Yet he had
learned to read and write flu-
ently, and heredity had blessed
him with eloquence plus the will
to live in harmony with convic-
tions. Methodist circuit -riders
and Baptist lay preachers were
organizing the massive frenzy of
camp meetings in Missouri. A
generation later, Alexander Ma-
jors might have turned to the
"cloth" and become a revivalist.
Instead, he used the Bible as his
"highest court" for ethical de-
cisions and busines,i judgments,
and developed eloquence by i
studying it.
So, in aide:Melling contrast. to
the frontier's hae hness, Majors
ran his freighting enterprise
with Calvinist ist discipline. No
work or travel wm permitted
on the Sabbath. Every employee
tnu_t eicu a pledge that read:
While I any in the enrploe of
A. Majors, I agree not to use pro-
fane language, not to get .drunk,
not to gamble, not to treat the
animals cruelly, and not to do
IDAYSC110011
LESSON
By Rev. it. Barclay li arrels
B.A., 13.0.
(liar Experience of God
Psalm 110; 1-14
memory Selection: 1 lova tate
Lord, because lye hath hearts
my voice and my supplicationyt,
Psalm 116:1.
We should withhold criticism
of that person, who, having ex.•
perienced great answers to pray-
er, appears very effusive in hie
exlireiorre of gratitude to God.,
We don't want to he like th4
Pharisee Who found fault with
the woman who washed the feet
of Jesus with her te4rs, wiped
211011 with the hairs of her head,
ki;ser.] Fits feet and unnointe,f
then with oitment. To her Jesu4
1 said, "Thy faith hath ,:;tiv'd then;
go in l e eve •' Luke 7;50,•
The v,Tilet ,r: • our Ii sou -had .
been in trouble anti sem uvr.
Solite physical affliction hoe
1 brought him low. Ila pray"1
earnestly and wee restored 52
health again, He was very grate -
fart. He said, "I will lake 11u
clip of salvation, and call upurt
the name ,:f tIl) L:o:3."
ii, severe jitney, 1c,.- proved 1
bie.4Alig to Tunny pc...;rlc•. W< uta
huuiblyd. We reali'o our town
silty. When e'.e prat' we
that God is merciful. That should
and usually doe; excite our
;case of it ttiitide. We make pto-
nti.aes of loving servleo to our
Lord. Some pay these vows and,
sorry to say, some do not,
The Psalmist said, "I will pay •
my yaw:; unto the Lord now Kra •
the presence of all His people"
He was not ashamed of his
Eene:actor. Indeed, he ;tinted
the people to lonow that greet
things the Lord had done for
him. Those who serve the Lord -
should boldly take their stand
for Him. We are called to be
witnesses.
Illness is an experience of the
spirit as well as of the body. We
can never be the same after it.
Some are embittered. Their atti-
tude is "Why should this happen
to me?" Why shouldn't it? This
world is a place of thorns and
suffering. Look around and he
thankful hat nothing worse has
happened to you.
Many are drawn closer to God
through pain. I have had that
experience. Only through suffer-
ing was God able to get my at-
tention and finally enlist lase tea
take up my cross and follow'
Him. I thank God for all His
ways with me. I Iove Him,
anything incompatible with the
conduct of a gentleman. I agree,
if I violate any of the above
conditions, to accept Wry- dis-
charge without any pay for my'
services."
The pledge signed, and care-
fully filed, kTajors presented to
each new hand a leather-bound
Bible, and later, ao his business
developed, a copy of his crisp,
learned "Rules for Wagon 1'Ias-
ters.'
Upsidedown to Prevent Peeking
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ISSUE 10 - 1960
BIKE FRIGHT ._ Way up in the air, 4 -year-old Richard Blahs
manages an uneasy smile for the benefit of the photographer
and Jane Britnell, 6. The 75 -year-old relic is mounted outside
a bicycle shop in Worcester Park, Suru iy, England.