The half-built memorial sits just off the mountainous Ortega Highway, about a mile from where six firefighters perished almost a half century ago this week.

Work has been done on the memorial, most of it by volunteers and fire crews. Cement walkways are built, the parking lot paved and striped and a retaining wall put up.

The road was officially declared the California Wildland Firefighters Memorial Highway in 1998, but there is nothing at the memorial site that indicates it is to honor the nearly 300 firefighters statewide who have died fighting wildland fires, or the six men who burned to death nearby.

The Decker Canyon Fire of August 1959 started when two teenagers left a party and headed down the twisty highway toward Lake Elsinore.

The driver lost control of his pickup truck and it plunged over an embankment, igniting the inferno.

The blaze started just before sundown when the breeze from the Pacific blows east across the rugged canyons and hills. However, at sundown the wind switches directions and blows back toward the coast.

When the wind shifted, six firefighters suddenly found the flames racing back at them at 100 miles per hour.

They never had a chance.

Planning began in 1993 for a memorial to the victims of that fire and all others who have perished fighting wildfires in California. Originally, the memorial was to cost about $200,000 and be engraved with the names of all who had died. By 2001, with little progress and even less money raised, the memorial design was changed and the price tag cut to $100,000.

These days, the even-further-scaled-back memorial's cost is about $60,000.

"Right now we're still about $30,000 to $40,000 short," said Joanne Evans, who retired last year after 34 years with California Department of Forestry and is a member of the nonprofit California Wildland Firefighters Memorial Committee, which is trying to raise the necessary money.

Fighting wildfires is more deadly now than it has ever been.

In the 1960s, an average of eight wildland firefighters nationally died each year. That number grew to 13 per year in the 1980s and 17 in the 1990s. In the first five years of this decade, that average has climbed to 22.

No state has had more wildfire fatalities than California.

Records going back almost 80 years show that 918 firefighters nationally have died fighting wildfires. Of those, 296 perished in California. Idaho ranked second with 122 fatalities. No other state has more than 40.

And yet, in California the memorial to those heroes today sits half-built with a gate across the parking lot.

For more information on the memorial, contact Evans at (951) 657-8704. Donations made payable to the memorial fund can be mailed to Evans at 470 North "A" Street, Perris CA 92570.

Contact columnist John Hunneman at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2603, or hunneman@californian.com.