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California fires still sending smoke our way Smoke boiling up from fires in Northern California continues to flow into the Rogue Valley. The closest blaze is the Stein Fire, burning some 720 acres in the Marble Mountain Wilderness about 30 miles south of the southern tip of Applegate Lake. The fire is relatively small, but it is belching a lot of smoke as it burns old-growth snags killed in the devastating 1987 fire season, fire officials say. "It's moving rather slowly now but we've had those winds that have been pushing the smoke up," said Paula Martinez, Klamath National Forest spokeswoman. About 340 firefighters have been assigned to the fire, which can be reached only by helicopter. Ten helicopters and two air tankers are at work on the fire, which was set during a July 24 lightning storm but didn't erupt until Labor Day weekend. In addition to that fire, smoke continues to billow up from a series of lightning-caused fires that have burned more than 60,000 acres in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest west of Redding, Martinez said. Most of those fires have been contained by fire lines. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA