ALAMO MOUNTAIN From this peak in the rugged Los Padres National Forest, you can just about see where the Day fire started last summer, flaring into life on Labor Day near Pyramid Lake and spreading quickly across the Ventura County backcountry. The reservoir is only five miles away as the condor flies, and it's possible to see much farther than that from Alamo Mountain's crest, which tops out at more than 7,000 feet.

The mountain also provides a striking view of the effectiveness of a fire-management tool that is too seldom used, even though it may be among the most cost-effective ways of dealing with the ever-present threat of wildfire in the West. The lesson being displayed atop this rocky, pine-shaded peak is particularly timely now, with the 2007 fire season apparently off to an early start and federal officials warning this week of a higher-than-usual danger of major wildfires throughout the western half of the nation this summer.

By the time wet weather finally snuffed the last sputtering flames and embers of the Day fire, it had roared uncontrollably across 254 square miles. Driven through rugged and remote terrain by fierce Santa Ana winds, it resisted containment by thousands of firefighters for more than a month.

Most of the Los Padres National Forest is covered by chaparral, not forest. Conifers are found mainly on the mountaintops, where there's sufficient precipitation. Alamo Mountain is typical, the shrubs that blanket its lower slopes giving way to Jeffrey and sugar pines at higher elevations.

Chaparral, a flammable mixture of hardy, drought-tolerant species such as ceanothus, manzanita, chamise, toyon and scrub oak, burns furiously but is adapted to and requires periodic incineration. Western conifer forests also are adapted to fire, but to fire of a very particular kind. Without recurring low-intensity fires, they become clogged with brush, woody debris and spindly young trees.

After a century of fire-suppression efforts in the United States, this is precisely the condition of tens of millions of acres of public forest. Not only do such conditions impair the health of individual trees, they also ensure that when fires finally do occur and they always do, thanks to lightning and incautious people with matches the flames burn more destructively. Instead of merely clearing and thinning the understory, such wildfires turn mature trees into torches and leave moonscapes in their wake.

The Day fire roared right over Alamo Mountain last September. Today, the rough dirt road that climbs the mountain passes through mile after mile of charred vegetation, the monochrome landscape enlivened only by small bursts of color where flowers and grasses have sprouted from bare soil. As the road ascends, the charred skeletons of chaparral shrubs give way to dead or dying conifers, their needles cooked brown by the heat. It's the scene typically found after an overdue fire sweeps through a western forest.

Near Alamo's summit, however, the pattern changes. On the downhill side of the road circling the mountaintop, the forest is black and brown. On the uphill side, it is green. The transition is abrupt and startling.

Hike though this pine-scented stand of healthy trees and it is clear from the scorch marks and cinders that the Day fire passed through. But for the most part, the big pines are just fine. Burn marks on the trunks indicate that the flames, 10 or 12 feet high on the other side of the road, were only 2 to 3 feet high here.

The difference? A few years ago, the Forest Service deliberately set fire to about 320 acres on top of Alamo Mountain, and the road marks the burn perimeter. Ignited during cool, moist weather, the carefully managed fire was allowed to consume the brush, debris and small trees that would otherwise have fueled a more destructive kind of blaze.

It is rare to be provided such dramatic and convincing evidence of the way prescribed burns and other fuel-reduction efforts can minimize the destructive effect of inevitable wildfires, rendering them routine and regenerative rather than catastrophic. The Day fire served as an unplanned experiment that tested the theory, at least on a small scale, and proved it sound.

There are plenty of places across the West where similar projects could minimize the threat of wildfire to rural communities or to particularly vulnerable forest habitat.

But the lesson of Alamo Mountain will be squandered as long as public-agency budget writers continue to shortchange prevention efforts while authorizing unlimited funds to battle fires that are too big and too intense to be extinguished by anything but winter.

John Krist is a senior editor and Opinion page columnist for The Star. To read previous columns, visit http://www.johnkrist.com. His e-mail address is jkrist@VenturaCountyStar.com.