TUCSON - Another warm winter with virtually no snow or rain has left Arizona in one of its worst droughts in decades.

Consequently, worried officials are bracing for an explosive wildfire season. Already this month, a stubborn, million-dollar blaze blackened 2,200 acres in southeastern Arizona and threatened Ramsey Canyon Preserve, a birders' paradise.

But officials also know that for the second straight year they will have sufficient manpower and equipment to counter any fires.

"We're going to be fairly close to 100 percent of most efficient level, which means we're going to be staffing most units at 100 percent seven days a week," said Don Van Driel, fire management officer for the Tonto National Forest, one of six in Arizona.

The weapon that will allow firefighters to fight back is the National Fire Plan, which evolved after the worst wildfire season in half a century in 2000.

The plan focuses on having a more aggressive response to severe wildfires, reducing their impact on rural communities and assuring sufficient capacity to fight future fires.

Congress provided $1.9 billion for the purpose last year, enough to pay for 5,000 more federal firefighters, double the number of helicopters and put extra resources into prevention, rehabilitation and restoration of burned areas, hazardous fuels reduction and research.

The figure is close to that again nationally this year, said Billy Zamora, a budget officer for the Forest Service's southwest regional office in Albuquerque, N.M.

The plan allots suppression funds including firefighter and management, support and prevention staff and overhead costs, aiming to bring resources up to what it calls Most Efficient Level (MEL) funding.

Each of Arizona's six forests gets additional funds for such national resources as air tankers, hotshot crews and the elite smokejumpers, as well as other earmarked funds.

The Tonto's current-year budget provides more than $6 million for principal firefighting activities, such as firefighting ground crews, fire engines and helicopters.

The Tonto has another $1.3 million to eliminate hazardous fuels through controlled burns or thinning of trees, especially in areas where homes and the forest come together.

But in several of the forests, it's already too late and too dry for prescribed burns.

"In January and early February, we had some of the most erratic nighttime behavior that we normally see in June," Van Driel said. "Things are really, really dry."

Further north, the Coconino National Forest, nine inches below its normal precipitation for the year, was already in moderate fire danger by late February.

And that was well before the start of fire-triggering lightning strikes.

The supervisor of northeastern Arizona's Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, John Bedell, will have a $30,000 increase in MEL funding, to $6.5 million, though the hazardous fuels budget was cut nearly $750,000.

The hardest-hit of the six forests was southern Arizona's Coronado National Forest, site of the state's first major wildfire this year.

Its MEL fire staffing dipped by $929,000 to $5.8 million this year, and its hazardous fuels budget was cut from $940,000 to $775,000.

But some of the losses will be offset through severity funding, additional money allowing a forest to bring on more resources under emergency circumstances.

"It allows us to bring on the firefighters earlier, bring on the tankers, bring on the helicopters," Zamora said. "So that's what we're doing."

The money given each forest is based on a cost pool calculated under the national plan.

Costs for sending in air tankers to drop retardant or hotshot crews from North Carolina and Tennessee come from an emergency fund that Congress provides, Zamora said.

"The idea is that the more firefighters we have ready, then we initial-attack the fires and they don't grow," Zamora said.

The severity funding comes out of the emergency pot, Zamora said, under the theory that adding resources early will lessen the severity of many fires.

The Apache-Sitgreaves, Bureau of Indian Affairs, White Mountain Indian Nation and Arizona State Lands officials will jointly request severity funding from federal officials.

That will provide more money early for additional helicopter and engine strike teams for rapid response when fires break out.

The National Fire Plan has increased resources from about 50 percent of what was needed to 95 to 100 percent, Bedell said.