Mike Pereira returned to Oregon Trail Heights Tuesday to find his home was intact, unburned.

Across the street, just a few yards away, all that remained of his two neighbors' homes were smoldering piles of rubble.

Pereira wanted to thank the firefighters for saving his house.

"Instead, they thanked me for having a great defensible space," he said.

Pereira was prepared, but he was lucky, too - at least one home in that neighborhood had a fire-safe roof and defensible yard, but burned to the ground anyway.

The Oregon Trail Fire affirmed what fire experts have said for years - trees, bushes and tall grasses within 100 feet of homes will quickly transform a grass fire into a house fire. And once that happens, the heat, flames and embers from a blazing home threaten every neighbor.

But the fire also showed a gap in how Idaho and the country prepare for wildland blazes and it raises questions about whether the rules - now drawn to push personal responsibility and protect property rights - are strong enough to work.

The Oregon Trail Fire that destroyed 10 houses, damaged many more and killed Mary Ellen Ryder started as a wildland fire. But it quickly became something else entirely - an urban fire.

As soon as the first houses caught on fire, the still-burning grasses were nearly irrelevant. From then on, the trees, shrubs and wooden roofs within the subdivisions became the fuels for the fire, and the wind direction and ability of the local firefighters to respond determined which houses would survive.

The Oregon Trail Fire showed that in a dense urban-wildland interface, it may not be enough that a few individual homeowners do all the right fire-safe things. If one neighbor doesn't, every home could be in danger.

THE GAP IN 'FIREWISE'

A collaborative program called "firewise" and state and city codes have evolved in the years since a wildfire burned through Oakland, Calif., neighborhoods in 1991. The guidelines recommend residents remove fuel, such as dead grass, and other entry points, including cedar-shake roofs, that bring wildland fires into urban landscapes.

But the rules are voluntary, and if a few people decide not to participate, an entire subdivision can be threatened.

Pereira has always been mindful of keeping his house and his yard as fireproof as possible, but now, he is a true believer.

The firestorm blazed just yards from his house, but Pereira's home showed no sign of destruction except for a phone book-sized patch of scorched lawn near the sidewalk and a few crumpled shingles on the roof, damaged by the force of the blasting water.

THE WRONG FOCUS

But despite the broad understanding that the critical fire protection area is around homes, the national wildfire debate and almost all of the money taxpayers spend on it has focused instead on the wildlands - some 98 percent of all forest fires are suppressed, often deep in the wilderness.

In 2004, $535 million of the federal government's $1 billion firefighting budget was spent fighting blazes away from homes and property, according to a 2006 audit by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's office of inspector general.

But the review found that the spending was counterproductive.

It prevents the nation, the states, local communities and homeowners themselves from taking the actions and spending the money that will really make a difference.

"The Forest Service, the Park Service, the BLM have all learned from their policy mistakes. Congress hasn't," said John Freemuth, a Boise State University political scientist and senior fellow at the Andrus Center for Public Policy.

Even thinning beyond 100 feet around communities, a solution popular among both Democrats and Republicans, is less efficient than creating firewise landscaping within that boundary and fire-resistant roofs, said Kelly Hawk, BLM community protection specialist and vice chair of the Wildland Urban Interface Working Team at the National Interagency Fire Center.

Without aggressive community firewise programs, Hawk said, "we likely will not see statistically significant improvement in wildfire-related structure loss trends over time."

States like California have uniform codes that require homes to maintain safe, firewise landscaping, fire-resistant roofs and access roads throughout subdivisions. Idaho doesn't have the same codes, and only this week did Boise - which enacted rules in the Foothills more than a decade ago - begin to explore similar codes citywide.

"What we found is that many states have not bit the bullet because, frankly, the voters won't accept it," said Michele Steinberg, Firewise communities support manager for the National Fire Protection Association.

After the more than 1,000 fires in California this summer, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif. ) has introduced a bill that would establish model wildland fire ordinances for building, landscaping and zoning. It would provide financial incentives for state and local governments that opt to implement them.

Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and the Environment Mark Rey, the Bush administration's point man on forest wildfire policy, said he didn't support the federal government instituting such rules for wildland-urban fires. But he said states and local governments should.

"It's an issue of public safety," Rey said Friday. "The need for local fire regulations is every bit as pronounced as the need for traffic regulations."

In the face of opposition to new regulations, state, local and federal agencies have developed the Firewise Communities program. It pushes the idea that communities are responsible for planning, designing and maintaining fire protection measures.

HOPING HE AND HIS NEIGHBORS AREN'T NEXT

Bill Morse has been working with Warm Spring Mesa Homeowners Association and the BLM to persuade all his neighbors to join him in making their homes safe from wildfire.

On Wednesday, he was out practicing what he preaches, using a weed cutter to cut the cheatgrass on the slope below his home.

Across the Boise River, the blackened slope and remains of burnt homes from the Oregon Trail Fire are grim reminders of what's at stake for Morris and his neighbors.

"If they weren't aware of the danger before, hopefully, they are now," he said.

Rocky Barker: 377-6484Cynthia Sewell: 377-6428