The Arizona Republic Jun. 30, 2008 12:00 AM

The time of year we fear is here. Scorching heat ... dry, whipping winds ... and indiscriminate dry lightning, remorselessly seeking something to ignite.

Last Wednesday afternoon, the lightning found its prey in the Gila River bed in the southwest Valley. From as far away as Chino Valley and Pine, firefighters descended on it.

This time, though, there is some balance to that annual, awful storyline. In the north country around Flagstaff, where early summer fire is a true mortal enemy, the fear has receded. They have acted in the north, and communities there are safer for it.

Public forest land in and around Flagstaff has been thinned - of both trees and dry grasses - to the point that fire experts in the area feel confident the communities there are safe from catastrophic fire, according to a recent report in the Arizona Daily Sun. The goal of creating a buffer of safety between urban areas and the wilds largely has been achieved.

"This ecosystem used to be 95 percent grass and 5 percent trees," said assistant Flagstaff fire chief Jim Wheeler. "Now it's 95 percent trees and 5 percent grass."

As reported by the newspaper's Cyndy Cole, Flagstaffs most vulnerable areas - the forested regions southwest of town - have been effectively thinned, with buffers of 2 or even 3 miles the norm. Within city limits, 10,000 of Flagstaff s 17,000 forest acres have been thinned, and owners of 700 urban properties have been issued cleanup orders.

Just 12 years ago, Flagstaff was not nearly so confident and prepared.

The 1996 Hochderffer Fire, one of the largest infernos ever recorded in the Coconino Forest, had sprung up to the north. Together with the Horseshoe Fire, it burned 40 square miles. And fires in four communities within the city limits had forced evacuations. For good reason, Flagstaff was judged Arizona's most vulnerable region for catastrophic fire in the late 1990s.

Not any more. Appropriately, the home of Wally Covington, director of Northern Arizona University's Ecological Restoration Institute, has led the way to restoring Arizona forests to a more natural, pre¬European state.

In the years since devastating, crown- topping wildfires became common in the nation's drought-stricken Western forests, Covington has emerged as a national leader of forest thinning.

The turnaround in Flagstaff is evidence of a determined community acting on Covington's vision. Conservation groups like the Nature Conservancy and the Grand Canyon Trust all were involved.

The vision is far from complete. Flagstaff s $15 million, 10-year effort has thinned just 29 percent of the forest ringing the mountain city. Experts there believe it would take a century - and uncounted millions more - to finish the 600,000-acre job.