1.   And in the past few weeks, Babbitt and his agency have joined the Forest Service in in calling for much broader use of prescribed fire.

2.   A major obstacle to prescribed burning is the risk that prescribed fire will escape control, damaging timber and even homes.

3.   But in the West, the Forest Service wants to have the Environmental Protection Agency exclude prescribed fires from regulations involving man-made particulates.

4.   It talks of letting more prescribed natural fires burn in wilderness areas.

5.   It will recommend continuing the policy of prescribed fires, or deliberate burns.

6.   So far, courts have found that agencies are not liable for prescribed fires that burn out of control and destroy private forests and buildings.

7.   They face skeptics who oppose any added logging or smoke from prescribed fires and those who worry that flames from prescribed fires might leap out of control.

8.   They advocate prescribed fires that are set and monitored by firefighters to thin out forests and prevent the type of wholesale devastation seen here last week.

9.   Authorities evacuated and closed part of Grand Canyon National Park on Wednesday as high winds drove a prescribed fire out of control.

10.   But forestry experts say that when properly monitored, prescribed fires are among the best and cheapest ways to prevent catastrophic wildfires.