CHOTEAU, Mont. - Montana is burning.

Residents along the Rocky Mountain Front eye acreage figures and weather forecasts hourly, hearts in mouths. Flames lick the fringes, consuming lodgepole pine and taxpayer dollars with unrelenting fury.

Some outlying communities face evacuation; others already have been asked to leave. Property losses are currently minimal, but with more than a month left in the fire season the U.S. Forest Service brandishes a chilling maxim around frontier landowners: It's not if, it's when.

"It's pretty shocking when you know the house you've lived in for more than 50 years is in the face of fire," said Vi Olson, a resident of the Teton River drainage west of Choteau.

The Bob Marshall Wilderness, 1.5 million acres of national forests straddling the Continental Divide, houses three of the nation's nine largest wildfires: the Ahorn, Fool Creek and Skyland fires. A Tuesday report by the National Interagency Coordination Center said fire management efforts on the three fires combined totaled $30.6 million. Roughly half of the sum went to the Skyland Fire.

According to Forest Fire Management Officer Brad McBratney, the costs of fire management have climbed steadily over the last 10 years, and now monopolize more than half the Forest Service's annual federal budget. This leaves other programs severely under-funded.

"They've been strapped," said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., during a late July visit to the Ahorn operation.

Forest Service personnel tend to anthropomorphize wildfires, discussing fire behavior and preferred fuels as some describe favorite foods. But for the men on the ground, in full sight of the flames, fire feeds and breathes as does any living creature.

"You gain a great deal of respect for it when it gets up and moves," said Kevin Tveidt, supervisor on the Lewis and Clark Fire Use Module based in Augusta.

Within the national fire community, a network as tightly woven as a new pair of Levi's, safety has emerged as a prime concern in recent years. Too often, the tragedies of coworkers trapped by flames echo as cautionary tales.

Tveidt recalled his experience working on the Thirty Mile Fire in Washington in 2001, where he and other personnel were called back from the fireline to attend funerals for firefighters who perished in the blaze.

"My greatest concern is that no firemen get hurt," said John Nelson, a part-time resident of Mortimer Gulch, where a non-mandatory evacuation was ordered nearly a month ago. "Other than that, you can put wood back together again."

But Forest Service personnel aren't the only individuals making sacrifices. Amy Mills, who operates Mills Wilderness Adventures with her husband, said she's been most impressed with fellow residents in Augusta. Members of the Augusta Volunteer Fire Department, normally employed elsewhere, work round the clock watering down properties in areas threatened by the Ahorn Fire, like Mortimer Gulch and the Benchmark.

"They're losing work time and not getting paid," Mills said.

Despite its efforts, the Forest Service suffers a great deal of criticism in the area. Some angered business and property owners say the agency wasn't aggressive enough with the wildfires early on.

"All you get here is flak," McBratney said.

Residents like Olson, who was evacuated from her home during the Ear Mountain Fire of 2000, are graduates of a different school of thought. Their experiences with natural disasters over the decades impressed on them how unpredictable the forces of nature that the Forest Service seeks to contain are.

"Those guys are putting their lives on the line to protect my property and our forest, and that's a pretty big responsibility," Nelson said.

McBratney understands the concerns of part-time and permanent residents alike in these endangered communities. For some, one hot dry day or one swift gust of wind could erase an entire life. Every weather change is a potential enemy for these residents in fire season, said Olson's neighbor, Al Wiseman.

"Mother Nature, we never know for sure what she's going to throw at us."

(Alex Sakariassen, of Bismarck, will be a senior this fall at the University of Montana at Missoula, and spent the summer reporting for the weekly Choteau Acantha in the heart of fire-threatened Montana.)