Science: Fire for Fun

“Why did you start that fire?” asked Dr. John P. Shea of a number of mountaineers. Among the answers:

“Kill snakes.”

“Burn out the ticks.”

“Get shet of the boll weevils.”

Dr. Shea did not believe them. A U. S. Forest Service official, he had been puzzled by large numbers of fires destroying timber from Louisiana to Virginia. Half of all U. S. forest fires occur in the South. Convinced that nine-tenths of them (nearly 60,000) were started on purpose, he launched an inquiry in the field of social psychology. He found a “typical area” of 440,000 acres in the southernmost spur of the Blue Ridge Mountains inhabited by 1,800 families. The forest people there admitted starting fires, but the reasons they gave were evasive or absurd.

Last week Science Service reported Dr. Shea’s conclusion that the real incentive was boredom. The fires were exciting—especially when fire fighters arrived.

The woodland firebugs are not daft in the sense that their urban colleagues are. But they have almost nothing in the way of diversion. Southern stocks of game and fish are dwindling; hillbillies have no money for movies. So the men whittle, talk, sit—or start fires.

Socio-psychologist Shea suggested a complicated cure. Since hillbillies do not like recreations foisted on them by outside do-gooders, he would persuade community leaders to build their own recreation centres, with movies, dancing, shooting ranges, horseshoe-pitching grounds, pine sticks for whittling, brass cuspidors.