Fires Claim First Life as Recovery Begins : Cleanup: The worst behind them, crews take initial steps toward reopening Yosemite next week. Elsewhere a Fontana firefighter succumbs to injuries.

Crews began clearing fire-weakened trees from alongside Yosemite roads Tuesday as a first step toward reopening the park to visitors next week, while elsewhere the rash of California wild-land blazes claimed a first life.

Firefighter Kenneth Earl Anslow, 20, died at a Chico hospital of injuries suffered when he was hit by a falling tree limb on a fire line in Mendocino National Forest. Anslow was from Fontana and worked for the Corona office of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, a state spokesman said.

Also in Northern California, helicopter pilot Van Honeycutt suffered a broken leg and other injuries when his aircraft crashed near Burney State Park while helping fight fires in Shasta County.

Meanwhile, Army troops from Ft. Carson, Colo., arrived to help fight the state’s wildfires, which have burned 210,000 acres since being touched off by lightning earlier this month. About 1,200 soldiers may be used to support fire efforts in California, officials said.

The biggest of the fires, in Tehama County, had burned across 115,000 acres in the Sierra Nevada foothills, but was 80% contained within fire lines on Tuesday, the state fire command center announced. A second, smaller fire in Tehama County was 60% contained.

Fears that new dry-lightning storms would sweep along the length of the Sierra Nevada on Tuesday and spark additional fires went unrealized, offering welcome relief. More than 31,000 lightning bolts have struck the ground in California’s forests and brush lands since Aug. 3, according to electronic sensors that report strikes to fire officers.

Fire officials say firefighting resources across the West have been severely taxed by the flurry of blazes, which have been fed by timber and brush dried out by four years of drought. Across the West, more than 22,000 firefighters were on the lines.

Inside Yosemite National Park, 28 separate fires continue to smolder in the back country, where conditions are severely dry despite unusual snow flurries early this summer. But most of the Yosemite fires were being dismissed as insignificant.

Only the largest--which have burned through 22,000 acres of mostly pine forest--are receiving the focused attention of firefighters. The fire near the Arch Rock entrance that destroyed 66 buildings in the mountain village of Foresta had burned 17,000 acres, about half inside the park and half in Stanislaus National Forest. It was 70% contained Tuesday.

Backfires set by firefighters to control the movement of the blaze were responsible for most of the approximately 3,000 additional acres scorched in the last day.

Two other fires in the park, in the Steamboat and Aspen Canyon areas, were expected to be fully contained Thursday, rangers said.

The impact of the disastrous fires may linger for years to come in the form of tumbling rocks, landslides and falling trees along Yosemite’s major entrance roads, park Supt. Michael Finley said Tuesday.

Potential danger to visitors is figuring heavily in considerations about when to reopen Yosemite Valley, the park’s most visited feature. More than 10,000 people a day in summer visit the valley, which has been all but empty since the evacuation of campers and tourists Friday.

Workers began clearing trees and fallen snags from along the park’s three western entrance roads Tuesday. The fires left a trail of burned-out trees and a covering of ash along state California 41, and the cleanup effort will further alter the landscape in a way that will not be “aesthetic,” Finley said.

“We cannot leave dead trees along the roads and we will be felling those,” Finley said. “It’s unfortunate but absolutely necessary for public safety.”

Safety of visitors also is threatened by loosened rocks on the cliffs above the entrance roads. The cliffs are normally bonded together by the roots of trees that burned.

“We expect rock falls to be a real concern for years to come,” Finley said. “It’s like you’ve had something held together with a rope and the rope has been severed.”

Finley said the Tioga Pass Road, a popular route across the Sierra Nevada, is expected to reopen by the end of this week. Detailed plans for allowing visitors back into Yosemite Valley next week will be announced today, he said.

Yosemite Park and Curry Co., the private concessionaire that runs lodging for 4,600 people in the valley, said it has offered those who held reservations this week a chance to reschedule. They also can receive refunds, but will not get special treatment for room reservations, which are in great demand in summer.

“We’re not going to compound problems by bumping someone else who has a reservation,” said John Poimoroo, vice president of communications. “That would not be fair.”

Poimoroo and some National Park Service officials fear that hordes of the curious may clog major highways leading into the park after it reopens. He pointed to the case of Yellowstone National Park, which endured a crush of people wanting to see the effects of disastrous fires there two years ago.

“Yosemite is only different in that it has a lot more day traffic,” Poimoroo said. “We hope they hold off on day visits for a while.”

Anticipating the public’s return, park officials also made plans Tuesday to return rangers, campground hosts, maintenance workers and even secretaries who were pressed into fire duty back to their regular jobs.

Ranger Cherry Payne, who was temporarily assigned to the fire information center in the valley, had to abandon preparations for Yosemite’s centennial celebration scheduled for Oct. 1.

“I haven’t even paid attention to the celebration for a week,” said Payne, in charge of organizing the event. “My No. 1 priority was to get out invitations.”

Meanwhile, a hazardous-materials team continued to examine the remains of structures in Foresta, where firefighters found exposed asbestos and evidence of ruptured power transformers that may have contained toxic polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

Roderick reported from Los Angeles and Sahagun from Yosemite. Times staff writer Harold Maass also contributed to this story from Yosemite.