With the giant Zaca Fire continuing to defy efforts at containment, fire managers on Friday were hashing out the details of a plan that would involve burning out huge swaths of the rugged back country northeast of the Santa Ynez Valley.

Fire officials stressed that a final decision had not been made on the plan, which includes creating fire lines as far east as Highway 33 north of Ojai and along the Sierra Madre ridge south of Cuyama, and then burning out fuels along roads and trails to stop the wildfire from expanding any further and threatening populated areas.

The strategy, which could add more than 100,000 acres of burned forest - primarily in the remote and roadless Dick Smith Wilderness Area - is designed to contain the blaze that has been burning for more than five weeks.

A new strategy was clearly needed “after six days of trying to hang on to five miles of fire line” to keep flames from moving south toward populated areas, according to Forest Service Incident Commander Bill Molumby.

“We have to do something with this fire,” Molumby told a large crowd gathered in Santa Barbara on Friday night. “We can't just keep chugging away at it.”

The Zaca Fire grew to 80,787 acres by Friday night, after a week-long stream of cool air from the Pacific Ocean helped quell the fire on the southern flank, just north of Upper Oso Campground, where crews labored to put out some 60 acres of chaparral and pine trees burning near Little Pine Mountain.

As a sign of success along the southeast flanks in the Santa Cruz Creek, fire officials removed a 13-day evacuation order for the seasonal homes of the Peachtree community.

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Evacuation orders remained in effect for the Paradise Road area.

The north and east ends of the wildfire remained unchecked as it moved slowly along Big Pine Canyon and into the Indian Creek drainage. Those areas are expected to burn more actively this weekend due to a drier and hotter weather.

Containment was estimated at 68 percent on Friday.

Until now, fire managers have relied on a less drastic approach - cutting fire lines by hand and with bulldozers and doing limited backfiring - to steer the blaze in an easterly direction, said Rich Phelps of the U.S. Forest Service.

Plans to begin the big burn-out will not be pursued until the less-drastic approach is deemed ineffective. Meanwhile, planners are essentially praying for better weather.

Since the start of the fire on July 4, strategies have changed as leadership has shifted from one agency to another - from Cal Fire, to the federal National Incident Management Organization (NIMO), and now to the U.S. Forest Service and the Santa Barbara County Fire Department.

Cal Fire initially wanted to keep it from entering the San Rafael Wilderness and stop it south of the Sisquoc River. When that failed, the state agency aimed to contain it within Buckhorn Road and McKinley Ridge.

Once the flames went beyond that perimeter, NIMO stepped in and drew a 210,000-acre bubble around the fire. Its incident commander, Aaron Gelobter, labeled that as “the box.”

But thus far, firefighters have not been able to come up with a strategy to completely corral the blaze, which two weeks ago was at 80 percent containment and burning slowly north of San Rafael Mountain, before surging over a ridge and threatening the Paradise Road area.

If the current approach doesn't yield results soon, Phelps said, fire managers will proceed with the big burn-out plan. Their greatest concern is the fire surging south and threatening communities along with Santa Ynez Mountain and eventually the South Coast.

Fire managers will discuss that approach this weekend before putting crews and bulldozers on the ground, said Mark Schmitt, a county fire division chief.

“Several different burn plans are currently being assessed by the operations team,” he said.

Those burn plans could include separating the perimeter lines into sections.

The date to set forth that plan is yet to be announced.

Even if they draw a perimeter around the fire, official say, they will continue their current efforts to stop the blaze. Molumby said that the success of the burn-out would depend on the weather.

The ultimate goals remain what they have been since the fire started on July 4 - to protect structures and the safety of firefighters battling the blaze.

“That's our primary objective, and has been from the start, to keep the fire away from populated areas,” Schmitt said.

During the standing-room-only meeting at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Los Padres National Forest Service Supervisor Ken Heffner called the new plan “absolutely the best strategy to protect both homes and the safety of firefighters.”

Allowing the Zaca Fire to nearly triple in size, however, raises concerns over what kind of impact it could have on the surrounding wildlife.

Forest officials contend the wildlife affected by this fire will recover over time and, in some cases, benefit from the burning.

“It's basically has a rejuvenating effect” to the forest, said Kathy Good, a spokeswoman with the Forest Service.

But not all who know the county's back country agree.

Short- and long-term effects on the wildlife are equally troubling, said Al Sanders, conservation chairman of the Los Padres National Forest chapter of the Sierra Club in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

The short-term effects, he said, include the deaths of those animals unable to flee the flames.

The long-term effect would create an environment where the animals, should they return, may find themselves in habitats not ideal for their survival, he said.

“They could possibly become prey to another animal,” he said. But even that's hard to predict without hard data, he added.

As an avid backpacker, Sanders said he's seen the effects wildfires have on streambeds and riparian habitat.

“The erosion is such that on really steep slope, there's a tendency to have landslides, which can go into creek beds and create dams that backup water, a totally silting of the water,” he said. “The water turbidity is increased to the point it's not fit for human consumption or wildlife itself.”

Officials have not been able to say how the Zaca Fire has affected the Sisquoc, Santa Maria and Santa Ynez rivers, where several endangered species reside, but they maintain that rehabilitation efforts have been underway since the first weeks of the fire in July.

Luis Ernesto Gomez can be reached at 739-2218, or lgomez@

santamariatimes.com. Senior Staff Writer Chuck Schultz

contributed to this story.

August 11, 2007