Station Fire, L.A. Credit: Anthony Citrano/ZigZagLens.com

The fires burning in the Angeles National Forest near Los Angeles have already cost two lives and thousands of acres of protected land. How much will the emergency spending to control the disaster cost the already bankrupt state?

Patt Morrison of Pasadena-based public radio NPR station KPCC reported this morning that the California Department of Finance has spent $106 million out of a $182 million emergency firefighting fund.

Even before the latest fire, California’s resources were burned out on fire control costs. In this piece from last July, the LA Times reported that fire service costs had grown exponentially:

“Wildfire costs are busting the Forest Service budget. A decade ago, the agency spent $307 million on fire suppression. Last year, it spent $1.37 billion. Fire is chewing through so much Forest Service money that Congress is considering a separate federal account to cover the cost of catastrophic blazes. In California, state wildfire spending has shot up 150% in the last decade, to more than $1 billion a year.”

At the time I wrote this blog, the biggest fear for radio and television stations in the region is the threat the fire poses to Mt. Wilson, where most of LA’s communications towers are set up. Media blog LA Observed reports that “Several area radio stations without backup sites at other facilities could be especially vulnerable, although information coming out of the fire area is understandably incomplete.”

PBS station KCET has a warning ticker on their its Web site, noting that services could be interrupted due to fire damage on Mt. Wilson. By the time you read this the fires could have already consumed Mt. Wilson. In fact, fire officials were predicting that such an occurrence was only a matter of when, not if, it would happen. Endangered fire fighters were already pulled from the top of Mt. Wilson for safety reasons.

For the latest on the Station Fire, follow LA public media resources SoCal Connected (on Twitter, @socalconnected) and KPCC’s Patt Morrison (@patt_Morrison). KPCC is also asking readers to send in their images of the fires and stories from the local area.