“What can groups of individuals do to stop the orcs”
You need groups of drivers who can split up areas and hours and patrol. It doesn’t take that many to cover many square miles. There aren’t enough cops. Even if the arsonist isn’t seen the patrol will find the fire early which is huge.
This is one thing that could be done, for sure. Needs people to organize. And if anyone is seen lighting a fire, they need to be shot.
PS problem is many are started in remote areas, dirt roads in mountains etc
PATROL
The best way to prevent fire is to prevent it. Putting out fires already started is better than letting them burn, but as the real foundation of a protective system it is about like lowering a lifeboat after the ship has struck. Only by patrol can the incipient spark or camp fire be extinguished before it becomes a forest fire that has to be fought, taking hours or days instead of minutes. One patrolman can stop 100 incipient fires easier than 100 men can stop one big fire. Fires in the forest may never be wholly averted, but patrol will prevent them from becoming “forest fires.”
This is why the progressive lumberman no longer waits till forced to layoff his crew to fight, spending in a day or two a patrolman’s salary for a season, shutting down his road and mill for lack of logs, and perhaps in spite of all losing several thousand dollars’ worth of timber and equipment. It is also why the progressive non-operating owner no longer considers fire loss the act of God, to be reckoned as an investment risk of several per cent. The man who does not patrol his timber nowadays is like a millman who hires no watchman, has no hose or sprinkler equipment, and carries no insurance. He may escape loss, but by not making a reasonable effort to insure against it he takes a course practically unknown with other forms of property.
Modern fire patrol is systematic. Trained and organized men have definite duties. Tools, assistance and supplies are available at known points and without delay. Trails and look out stations, often supplemented by telephone lines, give the greatest efficiency with the least number of men. Above all, the system is based on the fact that results are most truly measured not by the number of fires extinguished but by the absence of fire at all. Settlers, campers and lumbermen are visited, cautioned and converted. In short, the patrolman has a certain area in which to improve public sentiment. His success in this is worth more than efficiency in fighting fires due to lack of such success. A system devoted to mere fire fighting to be adequate must grow larger as time goes on. One devoted to preventing fire may be reduced, as time makes it successful.
The cost of efficient patrol varies so directly with the risk that it is almost constant as an insurance investment. Where prevalence of fire, difficulty of handling it, etc., make the cost per acre comparatively high, there is equivalent certainty of greater loss if this sum is not spent. Where the owner is warranted in believing his risk small it costs but a trifle to provide sufficient patrol to insure against it. One to 3 cents an acre is spent in the great majority of successful patrols in ordinary seasons.
Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest, by Edward Tyson Allen
Civil Defense — a methodology for setting up citizen patrols and organizing defense.
Citizens need to be patrolling their neighborhoods before the fires start,
An active citizens group can find the deficiencies the the local government forest maintenance programs and help them to do their jobs and stop creating dangerous fire condition through lack of maintenance.
An organized citizen’s group can make the government produce documentation on how they are managing the forests and if the are siphoning off money to use elsewhere.
An organized citizen’s group can protect their communities.
Jimmy Carter killed Civil defense when he created FEMA and it took accountability to the local citizens away and gave it to Washington DC