Prescribed Burnings

The idea is that fire refines the golden hue of California poppies. In an annual effort to stimulate poppy growth, the Los Angeles County Fire Department will burn 33 acres of nonnative plants and seeds at the California Poppy Reserve on Tuesday, state park officials said. "The purpose . . .

Rick Halsey is in search of senile shrubs. He rolls up California 79 in his Chevy pickup across the high tablelands of eastern San Diego County. Past a little adobe chapel from the Mexican era, he turns onto an unpaved road. He bumps along in low gear as the road rises into the granite mountains as a brilliant sliver of scarified earth, passing through gnarled stands of manzanita, red shank and chamise. In a shallow basin called Indian Flats, he comes to an abrupt stop.

More than 1,400 firefighters on Friday launched a fierce counterattack on a devastating wildfire as federal officials imposed a 30-day ban across the West on the controversial fire control tactic that accidentally led to the disaster. Officials unleashed 16 firefighting aircraft, including planes, aerial tankers and helicopters, to lead the battle after blowtorch winds unexpectedly subsided into light breezes and lower temperatures. The planes had been grounded since Tuesday.

Fires set intentionally to burn undergrowth escape control to become wildfires on federal lands in California far more often than anywhere else. At least 30 prescribed burns have escaped in the state since 2003, a figure accounting for roughly half of all such fires in the country, according to U.S. Forest Service data analyzed by the Associated Press. Those include two this year that prompted evacuations, highway closures and property losses in Orange and Siskiyou counties.

Fields that are sometimes ablaze with the vibrant orange of blooming poppies were glowing Tuesday morning in the orange of fire. In an experimental effort, the state Department of Parks and Recreation decided to set fire to nearly 15 acres of land within the sprawling California Poppy Reserve in hopes of increasing the display of poppies and other wildflowers in future years.

Conducting "controlled burns" to clear underbrush in grasslands is not the best way to prevent dangerous runaway blazes, according to controversial new research by a government scientist. Challenging prevailing wisdom, Jon Keeley, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Sacramento, and his colleagues found that proven forest fire control techniques aren't necessary or effective in brushlands.

For most of the last 2,000 years, and perhaps for as long as 11,000 years, American Indians have used fire to shape North America's forests. In the winter, they burned forests high in the mountains to drive elk and deer to lower elevations where they could be hunted. They burned forests and brush around their villages to keep enemies from hiding there and to prevent enemies from burning the villages down.

As federal forestry officials have retreated from the "Smokey Bear" philosophy that fire is the enemy, they increasingly have turned to small, controlled fires to thin dense growth on public lands. The fires, deliberately set under certain conditions, are intended to clear the undergrowth that could spark major wildfires and also restore the natural role of fire in forest ecosystems of recycling nutrients and promoting the reproduction of some species. As the destruction at Los Alamos, N.M.

A slow-moving "prescribed fire" swept five acres of San Onofre State Beach on Tuesday, charring decades-old coastal sage scrub and clearing sandy habitat for the endangered Pacific pocket mouse. A coalition of state and federal agencies coordinated the controlled burn, which was about one mile from the coast and about three miles from the San Onofre nuclear power plant.

Los Angeles County firefighters on Thursday put some weight behind their annual demand that dangerous hillside brush be cleared by May 1. Ten tons, in fact. Officials rolled out a 14-foot-wide, one-of-a-kind "brush crusher" that can effortlessly create firebreaks on the steepest and most fire-prone slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains.

As a stubborn wildfire continued to burn across the canyon lands in northeast Orange County on Wednesday, the U.S. Forest Service said it would cover all firefighting costs because it accidentally started the blaze. The fire, which has changed direction several times since it broke out before dawn Monday, grew Wednesday to about 8,635 acres. More than 2,000 firefighters were working to bring it under control.

A prescribed burn designed to reduce fire danger at the Grand Canyon jumped a containment line Wednesday, blanketing some of the park's busiest visitor spots with heavy smoke. The fire spread to within half a mile of park employee housing, national park spokeswoman Leah McGinnis said. Access to the canyon's South Rim -- the most frequently visited section of the park -- was cut off for several hours to everyone except park employees, although visitors already in the park were allowed to stay.

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Riverside) has called for a congressional investigation of the Carlsbad office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, concerned that the office delayed prescribed burns in areas overtaken by the Old and Grand Prix fires. State and local firefighters have said that their projects would have helped to manage the wildfires.

San Bernardino fire officials say their efforts to battle the October wildfires were hampered because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delayed for years their request for controlled burns. The city in 1995 received funding from the federal government to burn areas of heavy brush along the city's border with the San Bernardino National Forest. It took seven years for the Fish and Wildlife Service to conclude that the burns would not jeopardize rare animals and plants.

After months of preparation, the U.S. Forest Service launched a massive burn Tuesday morning to incinerate almost 5,000 acres of Los Padres National Forest that officials say represent a major fire hazard. The operation, which began 11 miles south of Frazier Park in the remote Alamo Mountain area, has been dubbed the "Alamo Burn." The fire will continue until at least Friday depending on weather conditions, said Forest Service spokesman Joe Pasinato.

Just beyond the sprawling outskirts of Phoenix, the heat is 111 degrees and the rush-hour traffic shimmers like a mirage. A billboard filled with verdant pine trees beckons: ''Come to the real Arizona.'' To the northeast, the landscape climbs from 1,500 feet in the Valley of the Sun to 7,000 feet along the forested Mogollon Rim, a magnet for vacation homes and retirement communities drawn by the promise of trout in cool streams and elk grazing beneath the ponderosa pines.

The agriculture firm that leases farmland from the Irvine Co. is burning thousands of the dead orange trees it has uprooted over the last year. The burns, which are done in cooperation with the Orange County Fire Department, began last week and will continue for at least another week. "If there is a period when we can't work because of rain or a shift in the wind pattern, it might take a bit longer," said Dawn L. McCormick, director of corporate communications for the Irvine Co.

Fires set intentionally to burn undergrowth escape control to become wildfires on federal lands in California far more often than anywhere else. At least 30 prescribed burns have escaped in the state since 2003, a figure accounting for roughly half of all such fires in the country, according to U.S. Forest Service data analyzed by the Associated Press. Those include two this year that prompted evacuations, highway closures and property losses in Orange and Siskiyou counties.

Thick plumes of black smoke blanketed parts of Indonesia, shutting down schools, delaying flights and forcing residents to wear masks, officials said. Forest and brush fires--set by farmers, plantation owners and loggers wanting to clear land--have raged for the last week on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Hospitals continued to report cases of respiratory problems. Indonesian officials have blamed farmers for most of the blazes.

The U.S. Forest Service said it did the right thing in igniting a controlled fire that leaped out of control and scorched more than 700 acres this week. "The clearing of this area will help to prevent the spread of fire from east to west under Santa Ana wind conditions," the Forest Service said in a statement released Friday, a day after its so-called Hemlock Burn got out of hand. By Friday night it was 30% contained.