Medfly Spraying to Step Up in O.C. : Malathion: A 36-square-mile area of north Orange County will be doused with pesticide perhaps a dozen times in an attempt to halt the pests’ rapid spread.

In a dramatic expansion of the state’s aerial assault on the Mediterranean fruit fly, agriculture officials said this morning they will spray a 36-square-mile area of north Orange County with pesticide perhaps a dozen times to try to halt the pests’ rapid spread.

The announcement marks a partial break from state protocol, which generally calls for spraying in smaller areas infested with pregnant Medflies. In Orange County, however, strategists decided to drop hundreds of gallons of malathion over not only the area around last week’s pregnant Medfly catch in Garden Grove but also over an adjacent swath near the discovery of a non-pregnant fly last month in Westminster.

“We wanted to be on the safe side,” said Gera Curry of the state Department of Food and Agriculture. “In as much as we’ll be treating Garden Grove already, it’s the more conservative view to treat (the broader region) as well.”

The first malathion spraying is set for the night of Jan. 25.

Tens of thousands of people in parts of Garden Grove, Westminster, Orange, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach, Cypress, Stanton and Anaheim will be advised to stay indoors, cover cars and take other precautions during the malathion applications, officials said.

Residents will face up to a dozen sprayings, beginning every three weeks and becoming more frequent as the weather warms.

The decision came as malathion critics in Orange County plan tonight to map out new strategies for opposing the sprayings. They question assertions by state officials that malathion poses no health risks.

The Medfly first appeared this season in August in Dodger Stadium and has been spotted dozens of times around the Los Angeles Basin since then.

State agriculture officials, fearful of a repeat of the crop-destroying pests’ devastating attack in Northern California in 1981, responded initially with single malathion applications in affected areas. Recognizing they had underestimated the problem, officials then regrouped and ordered widespread, repeated spraying over about 300 square miles around the Southland.

So far in Orange County, however, the applications have affected only an 8-square-mile area of Brea, Fullerton and La Habra, around the Nov. 17 discovery of a pregnant Medfly in a Brea guava tree.

Frank Parsons, deputy agricultural commissioner in Orange County, said the county backs the state’s decision to spray the expanded area despite the headaches it may mean for local officials.

“We want to err on the side of doing more than we need to do, rather than less,” he said. “Obviously, the more communities we have (sprayed), the more reasons for questions, inquiries, anxieties, apprehensions by residents. So it’s going to be a real busy time for us in community relations.”