Important Lessons Can Be Learned From Fires : Measures ranging from education about the outdoors to careful selection of building materials can help prevent or reduce future losses.

Within hours of the Old Topanga and Green Meadow fires, calls began to come into the California Park Service. People wanted to help restore the parks and were offering donations of their time, services, resources and even their Cub Scout packs. Others called with different concerns.

Questions were asked about flood hazards, reseeding and future brush clearance. All wanted answers as to how to restore the damage and how to prevent future disasters. Some wanted most to protect their homes and to accommodate additional future development. Others were most concerned about protecting native plants and natural systems within the parklands and open space.

The following are measures proposed by the California Park Service to prevent or reduce future losses to wildfires:

* Avoidance. Careful assessment should be made of all areas poised for future development to determine whether homes and other improvements would be exposed to fire. Where existing structures have been subjected to recurring wildfire episodes, thought should be given to moving them to less fire-prone or more defensible locations.

* Prevention. This includes using fire-resistant building materials and landscaping plants. Proper brush clearance, planning, equipment, access and procedures are also essential.

An important aspect of prevention is prescribed burning. Fire and park agencies burn in fire-prone areas without risk to neighboring communities and without causing the permanent damage to plants that occurs in fires during less favorable weather conditions. Prescribed burns are done when the air is damp, cool and calm.

Prescribed burns help maintain healthy native plant communities. Frequent fires keep the buildup of dense brush and the resulting fuel for fires at a lower level. Human settlement requires suppression of fires, which gives plants more years to become dense and large. Prescribed burns also open the soil for the growth of grasses and flowering plants. These plants provide food and habitat for birds and animals.

Unfortunately, some neighbors of natural areas fear all fires, including prescribed burns, and take legal measures to obstruct them. Furthermore, prescribed burns are costly, and park and fire agencies are not always able to complete as many as would be desirable.

Homes and communities have been spared from loss to wildfires because of prescribed burns. And homes have been lost that prescribed burning might have saved.

* Education. We value nature for its benefits to humans. Natural communities are a source of beauty, peace, inspiration and recreation. It has been said they contain resources that we have not learned to appreciate and answers to questions that we have not learned to ask.

However, we must also recognize the values of natural areas independent of any utility to humans. The parks and natural areas belong to our grandchildren and to the world. We are fortunate that those who came before us left them available for us to enjoy. We must do the same for future generations.

Education is most effective when it includes classroom study, reading and visits to the parks. Hikes, camping, day camps, picnics and guided nature walks are all available in our parks.

* Restoration. The good news about the burned-off hillsides is that they will restore themselves on their own. The fires leave a seed supply that is adequate to fully restore the natural plant communities. The bad news is that increased runoff and resulting mudflows often follow the denuding of the hillsides.

Seeding with ryegrass or other fast-growing non-native plants has been shown actually to impair the restoration of a stable plant community and retard the re-establishment of erosion-preventing plants with deep root systems. So state parks move to check erosion only where structures or communities are threatened. Erosion in natural areas is normal and unavoidable.

Obviously we cannot prevent all problems that occur where human settlements are adjacent to natural areas. Each has impacts on the other. We hope that through wise avoidance, prevention, education and restoration practices, we can minimize loss of property to fire and reduce our impacts on the natural areas.

Perhaps the best way that all of our concerned citizens can help, including the Cub Scouts, is to use dramatic series of fires to learn about the laws of nature and to respect and honor them.