Fire Waste and Rainfall in Kansas
Weather conditions have a greater effect upon fires than is generally supposed if the experience of Kansas during the past three years may be relied upon as a fair test, says State Fire Marshal L. T. Hussey, of Kansas, in his report for 1915. Comparative tables prepared in this office show that during the two years and nine months the department has been in existence the fire loss, with very few exceptions, has gone up when the rainfall has been light and down when the rainfall has been heavy. The comparison is especially striking in the summer of 1915, when the rainfall for five months in succession ran far above normal, while the fire waste for the same months was only two-thirds as large as in the corresponding months of 1914, and only half as large as during the same period in the extremely dry summer of 1913. The fact that a drop to well below normal in the rainfall in the closing months of last year was accompanied by a prompt rise to well above normal in the fire waste makes the comparison still more impressive. It is quite possible that the result might be less striking if a longer period of time or a larger territory could have been included. It would be going too far to say that the fire waste is uniformly controlled by the rainfall. Nevertheless there can be little doubt that weather conditions constitute the largest single factor in causing fluctuations in the fire loss, and in abnormally wet or dry seasons may become the dominant factor.
Weather conditions have a greater effect upon fires than is generally supposed if the experience of Kansas during the past three years may be relied upon as a fair test, says State Fire Marshal L. T. Hussey, of Kansas, in his report for 1915. Comparative tables prepared in this office show that during the two years and nine months the department has been in existence the fire loss, with very few exceptions, has gone up when the rainfall has been light and down when the rainfall has been heavy. The comparison is especially striking in the summer of 1915, when the rainfall for five months in succession ran far above normal, while the fire waste for the same months was only two-thirds as large as in the corresponding months of 1914, and only half as large as during the same period in the extremely dry summer of 1913. The fact that a drop to well below normal in the rainfall in the closing months of last year was accompanied by a prompt rise to well above normal in the fire waste makes the comparison still more impressive. It is quite possible that the result might be less striking if a longer period of time or a larger territory could have been included. It would be going too far to say that the fire waste is uniformly controlled by the rainfall. Nevertheless there can be little doubt that weather conditions constitute the largest single factor in causing fluctuations in the fire loss, and in abnormally wet or dry seasons may become the dominant factor.
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