Paradise burning: how to live with wildfire.

Do you own property in a fire-prone area? Here are cutting-edge ideas from neighborhoods that have really felt the heat. like science fiction," mused one witness to the Oakland holocaust.

"I lost the house I raised my children in," mourned a city councilwoman.

"It's terrible from the air, terrible from the ground," observed California Governor Pete Wilson.

Last October, the nation's worst-ever loss of homes to a wildfire (2,813 houses, 433 apartments) served as an awesome, grim postscript to the West's 1991 fire season. The Oakland inferno fulfilled a scenario that U.S. Forest Service and California Department of Forestry (CDF) officials have feared for years.

The estimated $3 billion property loss and $10 million bill for fighting the fire pales when compared with the loss of fife and the towering intensity of the flames. Fueled by wood structures, bone-dry grass, and oil-heavy eucalyptus trees, then explosively propelled on steep slopes by winds gusting to 40 miles per hour, the inferno claimed 25 lives in one catastrophic afternoon and evening.

Out of the devastation came a compelling question for those of us who live in similar wildfire environments: Can we protect our homes from a similar fate?

And if so, how?

Weeks before the Oakland disaster, this same question led me into a four-state, 4,500-mile quest for answers. Constantly in my mind was the foreboding thought that the fire-prone West was in its fifth year of drought.

For those willing to "get real" about fire protection, I found solutions that hold legitimate hope.

ARNOLD GETS TOUGH

Some 125 miles east of Oakland, fire broke out in the Sierra foothills near the little town of Mokelumne Hill in 1989. The thermometer stood at 102 degrees with 10 percent humidity. "The fire exploded, jumped a two-lane highway, and burned 400 acres," recalls Carl Kent, a California forestry department arson investigator. That same summer at the nearby community of Railroad Flat, an arson-caused fire crackled through 10,000 acres in eight days, and a 100-engine strike team converged to protect foothill homes-at horrendous cost.

Fires like the ones at Mokelumne Hill and Railroad Flat have for years reminded folks in nearby Arnold (population 12,000) that they might be next.

They have reason to fear. Dry grass, manzanita brush, and ponderosa pine cover the canyons surrounding Arnold, afternoon winds from the Pacific supply oxygen, and property owners by the thousands have erected flammable homes. Add a dry lightning strike or one thoughtless person discarding ashes from a barbecue, and the scenario erupts.

Art Hastings, who heads the California forestry department fire station in Arnold, relates that as recently as 1978, "Almost every such fire spread into the forest. Each time, we would deploy 13 engines, two aerial tankers, plus hand crews. "

Well, times have changed in Arnold. A gung-ho group known as Volunteers in Prevention (VIP), believing that people can make a difference, is encouraging property owners to take fire protection seriously. Supporting VIP's efforts: the California Department of Forestry, U.S. Forest Service, and the Ebbets Pass Fire District.

Helped by tough new state laws (see "California Lays Down the Law" on page 26), a group of 80 VIPS -many of them seniors-fan out through the community to spread the word. They stress the need for providing adequate clearance around homes, storing firewood away from structures, and clearing flammables for at least 100 feet on downhill slopes-measures that might have saved Oakland.

The VIP work is coordinated by Sharon Torrence, a state forestry fire officer who relies heavily on inspection reports from the volunteers. For homeowners who choose not to cooperate, the initial fine is $119.

The results are impressive:

* Since Arnold's VIP effort began 12 years ago, it has become California's leading wildfire-protection program.

* The inspections have triggered the issuance of more than 1,000 citations since 1980 in this get-tough approach.

* Compliance with the regulations following a citation is now better than 99 percent.

* The Insurance Services Organization (ISO) fire-insurance rating for Arnold has improved dramatically, reducing insurance premiums. Reasons: All subdivisions now require fire-resistant roofs in place of shingles and shakes, and Arnold today has a 200foot-wide firebreak around most of its periphery.

A HIRED PRO

The 1960 Donner Fire just north of California's Lake Tahoe makes the Railroad Flat disaster seem like small potatoes. Driven by winds of 50 miles per hour, the Donner Fire consumed 45,000 acres from Donner Pass clear to the Nevada border. In its path: manzanita, buckbrush and bitterbrush, Jeffrey pine, and other fuels to the tune of 30 tons per acre.

In the decades following the 1960 fire, the community of Tahoe Donner came into existence. Today the handwriting is on the wall for Tahoe Donner. The prescription for disaster: 6,100 residential lot hilly terrain, convective winds that compress through the Donner Pass venturi, plenty of fuel, and your choice of starts: weekend barbecuers, lightning, arson, structural fires, or blazes that commonly ignite along Southern Pacific Railroad's right-of-way.

The Tahoe Donner property owners' association wisely decided to seek professional help, and three years ago it hired Douglas Smith, a California-registered forester, to spearhead a major fireprotection program.

With good reason. A recent housing boom in Tahoe Donner means that the community now finds itself with some 2,800 upscale residences, shake roofs (translate that as kindling) on the older homes, up to 15 percent of the conifers surrounding these homes dead from bark beetles and ready to torch, and a major crop of manzanita freezed-dried into worse-than-usual flammability by a winter cold snap.

For Smith, the first and obvious imperative was fuel reduction. He wasted no time:

* He acquired a hefty $15,000 wood chipper to reduce dead timber and brush-flammable fuel that is chipped for homeowners at their property for free if they do the tree felling.

* He developed a firewood program, offering bucked wood to homeowners at $40 per cord-an important fuel-reduction move.

* He began promoting fireprotection awareness through stories in the Tahoe Donner News, contracted for the use of a rubber-tired hydroaxe brushbuster to improve fuelbreaks on the dry slopes, and conducted successful experiments with a so-called "slashbuster" bladed-disk machine to reduce fuels on steep slopes.

As Tahoe Donner's program gains momentum, major firebreaks appear in strategic places, brush and slash disappear around homes, and community support grows. Some of the firebreaks are even being used as attractive chip-covered trails.

"There's some complaining about the program," Smith reports, "but most residents are saying Do it more; do it faster.' "

TOUGH SISTERS

Sisters, a retirement mecca in Oregon east of the Cascades, is the kind of town where folks can breathe pine-scented air and glimpse sunrises against spectacular peaks. But add flammable manzanita and bitterbrush to that mix, and you have the ingredients for a bona fide disaster.

A wildfire in the summer of 1990 made the point in tragic fashion. A camper's fire escaped, bounded at 35 miles per hour with no driving winds present, and charred some 3,300 acres and 22 homes in a classic six-mile run. Fire officers agree that a wind from the west-the customary pattern-could have fanned the fire right through nearby Bend, a town of 17,000.

Fortunately for a 240-acre subdivision in Sisters, some of the residents are former Oregon Department of Forestry and U. S. Forest Service employees who know that wildfire danger is real. Today the Sisters subdivision is probably the state's top wildfire-protection example.

Explains Wayne Rowe, co-chairman of the local Central Oregon Fire Prevention Cooperative, "The subdivision realized the potential for fire early on, put a fire-prevention person on its board of directors, and established its own burning regulations."

Thanks to the leadership of Jim Fisher, former information chief for the California forestry department, the subdivision is light years safer today than it was 15 years ago:

Every home is identified by a large, reflective address number, which directs fire equipment to the right place.

* The subdivision has built four roads as escape routes and access for fire equipment.

* Come fire season, no outside burning is permitted.

* At press time, the subdivision was campaigning to pass tough new amendments requiring Class A (fire-resistant) material on all new and replacement roofs and setting specific, measurable fuel-reduction standards around homes.

BACK ON ORCAS 

Returning to my home on Orcas Island, Washington, I looked down from our sometimes hot and dry 1,400-foot mountain. The slopes are covered with potential wildfire fuel from two major blowdowns in recent years. I thought about the single, narrow road that provides access to our eight-home subdivision.

Fortunately we are making progress. With plenty of encouragement from Washington's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and our local fire chief, and despite some grumbling by those who just can't conceive of our "paradise" burning, we too are beginning to take steps.

We have established escape trails, reasonably safe refuges, and fire-engine turnarounds as suggested by the DNR. We've installed water pipes for fire use, cleared brush from our roads, and begun a selective defueling program on our ridgetop. Three of us have installed steel roofs.

Like the other programs, ours will-and must-be ongoing. Even here in supposedly damp northwestern Washington, our mountain has had major fires, and getting real about wildgame we all need to play. And play well.

FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE

For residents of tiny Cooper Landing (population 386) on Alaska's scenic Kenai Peninsula, last year's Memorial Day was memorable indeed. A trace of smoke behind nearby Russian Mountain slowly became a column, then a billowing upward mass. Townspeople realized their community might be consumed, a huge U. S. Forest Service campground destroyed, a posh new resort ravaged, and valuable salmon and wildlife habitat trashed.

No ordinary wildfire in a state that experienced 3,000 starts last year, this one moved through stands of bone-dry, barkbeetle-killed spruce. Almost overnight, 500 firefighters converged for a $3 million fight. A shift in the wind kept the fire from reaching an in-place community fuelbreak. Had the wind not. changed, however, the fuelbreak could have been critical.

State and federal forestry managers had seen the crisis coming at least six years earlier. But the chemistry between the community and the U. S. Forest Service simply hadn't jelled. But then, in 1989, Forest Service district ranger Dwaine Harp formed a 12-member working group of community and agency people to punch through some protection.

The Forest Service fielded Warren Oja, a former gyppo logger now working for the Chugach National Forest, as project leader, and Gene Lassard, a pest-management pro. Before it was all over, these two would be labeled "loose-cannon" nonconformists within their agency-and as extraordinary fireprotection organizers.

Other players included a rafting-company entrepreneur, a Department of Interior retiree, a staunch Sierra Club environmentalist, a besieged local logger, and assorted others from the area. The scenario unfolded like a Far North soap opera:

At the first meeting, a near-fistfight developed when the logger and the Sierra Club rep vented their frustrations. All Alaska state trooper had to pull them apart.

Following doubts expressed by the group that the Forest Service could really help, Oja delivered a dramatic ultimatum:

If you people collectively don't want us, we'll pack our bags and go back to Anchorage. " Whereupon the group accepted the offer.

But instead of taking off, Oja and Lassard shed their Forest Service uniforms in favor of Levis and checked shirts, sensing that the uniforms were unproductive, The two men also began writing firewood permits on paper napkins, no less, to spare locals the long drive to the ranger station for an "official" permit. That's definitely not in the Forest Service procedures book.

The unconventionality of these moves, understandably, didn't please some higher-ups in Washington who may not understand the way things happen in Alaska. But consider the results: With surprising speed, as the Cooper Landing group realized they actually had a say in the fire-protection program, here's what happened:

* The core group collectively analyzed the situation, mapped out seven alternative fuelbreaks using Geographic Information System (GIS) maps supplied by the Forest Service, and settled on one.

* The Forest Service logged a half-mile-long parcel of flammable conifers south of town, removed dead spruce from a number of inholdings along the nearby Russian River and around an 84-unit campground, and gave away 2,000 Scotch pines to replace blighted spruces.

* The Forest Service swung into a two-year effort to defuel a critical 4,000-acre block of mostly dead timber west of town. Aspen, black cottonwood, willow, and alder-with their high moisture content-are being left in place.

* Twenty-six Forest Service volunteers arrived on-scene and removed bug-killed spruces around 18 high-risk homes at Cooper Landing. "This year they came back with their wives!" marveled Noel Hanson, 83, who couldn't quite handle the 20 dead spruces on his place.

* As the season's volunteer activities concluded last summer, locals gathered with Forest Service, state, and other fire people for a festive potluck at the agency's Grandview guard station overlooking Kenai Lake.

Oja (who is recovering from injuries suffered when a bear attacked him during a remote hunting trip) and Lassard received the Forest Service's "Point of Light" award signed by the agency's chief,

Meanwhile, the rafting-entrepreneur committee member shared her feelings. Before, it was the `greenies'-bureaucratic, negative stuff, " recalls Carole Galbraith. "But as the program started, I felt we had a real influence. It boosted my self-esteem that people wanted to hear what I had to say. "

That kind of person-to-person community involvement was probably the key to Cooper Landing's outstanding effort.

CALIFORNIA LAYS DOWN THE LAW

California leads the way in passing tough wildfire-protection laws. The legislation requires persons living in forested, brushy, or grassy lands to do the following:

Maintain a minimum of 30 feet of defensive nonflammable) space around structures and up to 100 feet in special conditions-i.e., downhill slopes.

Maintain roofs free of combustible materials.

Remove parts of trees within 10 feet of a chimney or stovepipe, and screen flue outlets.

Remove dead wood from any tree overhanging a building.

The director of the California Department of Forestry has broad powers to impose additional restrictions as required in special cases. It is hoped that the penalty for infractions-$100 to $500-is stiff enough to give pause to violators. -HERBERT E. McLEAN