Twenty years ago today, Joan Anzelmo was standing on a hill near Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park, with the wind blowing past her at near gale force.

The former Boise resident and National Interagency Fire Center staffer, who now is superintendent of Colorado National Monument, was touring the park with her boss, Yellowstone Superintendent Bob Barbee. It was Black Saturday, the day 165,000 acres burned and the great Yellowstone fires of 1988 doubled in size in an afternoon.

Convection clouds created by the firestorms could be seen in all four directions, Anzelmo said.

"At that moment, it was clear that man was not going to stop these fires," Anzelmo said.

Today, the nation's entire firefighting bureaucracy recognizes the limits on stopping giant fires. Scientists also recognize the other big lesson of the 1988 fires that burned more than 1 million acres in and around Yellowstone: Fire is an essential part of the Western forest ecosystem, and without natural forest fires, brush, dead trees and other fuels build up and cause the fires to become ever more catastrophic.

But this season, federal agencies under intense political pressure have continued attacking almost every wildfire - many deep in the woods. That's especially true in California, where 2,000 fires have burned more than 1.2 million acres, destroyed more than 500 structures and led to the deaths of 15 people.

Yet in a few places, a new policy has taken hold - one that encourages firefighters to restore fire to the landscape while still protecting communities and other valuable resources.

In the Shoshone National Forest near Yellowstone and at Featherville about two hours east of Boise, fire managers aggressively fought fires this month that threatened buildings and homes. But when the threat lessened, managers allowed the blazes to burn safely into the backcountry, saving millions of dollars and keeping fire personnel out of danger.

Meanwhile, the Forest Service has spent nearly all of the $1.2 billion Congress allocated for firefighting this year, prompting forest managers to cut spending on other programs - including $30 million budgeted for thinning excess fuels in the forest.

DEADLY FIRES

Among the season's most controversial decisions was the choice to continue fighting a series of fires burning deep into wilderness on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in northern California, where nine firefighters were killed and four injured when a helicopter ferrying the firefighters into the wilderness crashed.

Forest Service officials say their suppression efforts in Shasta-Trinity are aimed at reducing the clouds of unhealthy smoke that surrounding communities are forced to breathe.

"The reason they were there was really a policy issue and that policy still stands," said Tim Ingalsbee, executive director of the Eugene, Ore.-based Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. "There are still firefighters being put in there at unnecessary extra risk."

But the decisions on when, where and how aggressively to fight fires are complex and made with often-fearful stakeholders in mind: homeowners, business owners and, this time, political leaders ranging from Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

When firefighters' lives are involved, managers ignore politics, said Jason Kirchner, a Forest Service Pacific Region spokesman.

"There's not an incident commander out there that's going to put firefighter lives at risk for politics," Kirchner said.

Shasta-Trinity officials had no choice but to fight the fires aggressively because the forest has not updated its obsolete fire plan. Forest managers are required by law to fight fires aggressively on all fires there, Kirchner said.

Still, local forest officials defend the decision - not only to reduce smoke but also because the fires, which have now engulfed more than 105,000 acres, might get larger and leave the wilderness. So far, fighting the fire has cost $65 million.

"If you don't do anything, those fires tend to get larger and they can move outside the wilderness boundaries impacting the areas outside the wilderness," said Kent Romney, a spokesman for the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.

But regional forest officials have come to the same conclusion Anzelmo did in Yellowstone on Black Saturday.

"In the long run, it's going to be weather that's going to put these fires out," said Kirchner. "We're going to look for opportunities to reduce the intensities of these fires and be as safe as possible."

FEATHERVILLE FIREWISE

A column of smoke visible in Boise rose Monday on the South Barker Fire just a half-mile from Featherville. Sawtooth National Forest officials had planned for a future prescribed burn there, so they had options.

With the support of the community that had worked with landowners to remove brush and trees from around their homes, Sawtooth officials designated the lightning-caused blaze a "fire-use fire," which allows them to fight it when it threatens homes and let it burn into the backcountry.

Fires in the past decade have heightened Featherville residents' recognition of the risks of big blazes, said Venetia Gempler, a fire spokeswoman. They see the benefits of having fire reduce the fuel in the forest.

"The community support's been great," Gempler said. "A lot of them say it's about time."

Garry Holmes and his wife, Myrna, have lived in Featherville since 1995 and watched as fires have burned around Atlanta and elsewhere in the area.

He's not sold on the idea of allowing fires to burn at this time of year, but he trusts the Forest Service.

"We don't feel like we're threatened," Holmes said. "Boise National Forest has said they will fight it with all that they got, and I believe them."

So far the 4,700-acre fire, which has burned since Aug. 7, has cost less than $1 million.

BLACK SATURDAY'S LONG SHADOW

Fire bosses on the 42,000-acre Gunbarrel Fire in the Shoshone National Forest east of Yellowstone briefed firefighters Tuesday on fires that had burned 20 years before in the same area. They told firefighters to be ready for the dry, cold front that would move through the area Wednesday - the anniversary of Black Saturday. Conditions are expected to be surprisingly similar.

But firefighters aren't worried about a repeat of 1988, in part because the wind is carrying the fire the direction they want it to go, said Randy Moench, the fire's spokesman.

When lightning started the fire July 26, Shoshone forest officials called in the special fire-use team - firefighters specially trained to manage a fire, not just to put it out. When the fire turned and threatened nearby homes, the team was replaced with a regular firefighting team.

When it resumed its safer course, the fire-use team returned. Managing the fire has cost $5.2 million so far.

The South Barker and Gunbarrel fires are both part of a pilot program the agencies call "appropriate management response," which gives them more flexibility to go back and forth between full suppression and allowing fires to burn to meet conditions on the ground.

"We're trying to work with a new concept, a new world," said Moench. "It's going to take a while."

Anzelmo first glimpsed that new world in 1988, and she's not surprised it is still taking time to transform federal firefighting policy. The National Park Service stopped all prescribed burning after the big Yellowstone burns until each park got approval for a detailed fire plan.

As acting superintendent in 1991, Anzelmo signed Yellowstone's plan that remains in effect today.

"In some ways it was almost blasphemy to have these kind of conversations then," Anzelmo said, recalling the public outcry against Barbee's leadership in 1988. "When we look back we see he made the right decisions."

Rocky Barker: 377-6484