Our view: It's time to stop playing with fire

Eastern Del Norte County is on fire. And so far, the flames are mostly being tended rather than fought.

The three-week-old Blue 2 Fire that has burned about 2,800 acres east of Klamath has been a low priority for fire officials from the start. The same can be said for the 25,500-acre Siskiyou Complex Fire, which crossed into Del Norte County this week and is slithering ever closer to a possible merger with Blue 2.

It's understandable that most of the firefighting resources have been directed elsewhere. Dry conditions and a massive thunderstorm have ignited fires all over Northern and Central California. At their peak, there were 1,781 fires burning, and currently there are 322, the state Department of Forestry & Fire Protection reported Friday.

While 100 residences and one commercial building have been lost so far, more than 13,300 residences and 140 commercial buildings are still threatened, according to CalFire.

Flames have devoured many miles of terrain and forced residents to evacuate near scenic Highway 1 in the Big Sur area. Homes have also been lost, and many more are threatened, near Paradise and other areas north of Sacramento.

Overall, the response to California's firestorm has been massive. More than 20,000 firefighters are working in 429 crews with 1,507 fire engines, 282 bulldozers, 418 water trucks and 108 helicopters.

Out of that, four hand crews, one helicopter and four fire engine crews were tending the Blue 2 Fire on Friday, a doubling of the resources allotted to the fire a day earlier. Officials described the situation this way: "Extremely steep terrain, heavy fuels, few natural fire barriers, limited access and availability of firefighting resources."

There are sexier fires to fight than those in the backwoods of Del Norte and Siskiyou counties that aren't threatening homes or other buildings. The crews that are on the scene here are doing what they can to at least partially contain the blazes. But they're like an understaffed jail trying to guard way too many unruly prisoners. It's dry and windy out there, and these fires could still explode.

At some point officials need to address just how much public land they're willing to risk by monitoring the paths of the fires more than attacking them. It's appropriate that some fires in California remain higher priorities, but maybe that means even more help is needed from other states and the federal government.

Gov. Schwarzenegger has asked President Bush for more equipment and personnel to help build fire lines and train California National Guard troops deployed to assist firefighting efforts. Let's hope some of those reinforcements make their way to the state's northernmost region.

It's not as if state fire officials don't know we exist. When a fire broke out between Gasquet and Hiouchi on Friday night, the response included air tankers, peeled off no doubt from other firefighting efforts.

Two other notes: Some might say these fires demonstrate the folly of not selectively logging some of Del Norte's public lands to reduce their combustibility. And clearly there is irony in the fact our normally aggressive efforts to quickly extinguish wildfires builds up dense forests that are more prone to conflagrations.

But those are issues for when the smoke clears. Right now, what we could really use is an aerial assault on the flames that are eating up our natural resources and threatening to overwhelm containment efforts.