After five days of smoke from a 1,024-acre prescribed burn in the Black Hills National Forest, Angie Schroeder said the main illness at her house was related to air space, not breathing difficulties.

"No asthma, just cabin fever," said Schroeder, the mother of three young children, ages 5, 3 and 16 months. They couldn't go outside to play all week due to the smoky conditions caused by the Bullock II burn, which torched grass, undergrowth and trees just northwest of Sheridan Lake.

The fire, set on purpose, is part of Forest Service efforts to better control future wildfires by changing current vegetation patterns on the forest floor.

"Our whole house smells like smoke, everything has to be laundered, and the car stinks, but I'm thankful they did it. It's better than being burned out by a wildfire," Schroeder said as she gazed across her backyard at the blackened forest floor just yards from her home.

The Bullock burn went as planned and accomplished what burn boss Kevin Weaver wanted it to: Reduce the danger of wildfire in the urban/forest interface where there are homes and create more open spaces that will improve conditions for wildlife.

"No surprises. We're hitting most of what we wanted," Weaver said Friday afternoon during the last day of the burn, which began Sept. 29 and involved a crew of about 50.

Weaver explained that prescribed burns are done to improve fire crews' chances against future wildfires. "We're trying to set up the fire behavior on our terms."

That means eliminating some of the heavy combustible materials on the forest floor and opening up the canopy of trees by burning small, spindly Ponderosa pine trees, as well as the lower branches of larger, healthy trees. In areas not visible from U.S. Highway 385 or from private residences, the goal is to disrupt the canopy in openings as big as 8 acres in some places to increase biological diversity.

Across Highway 385 from the burn, Carrie Beaudette, owner of the Horse Creek Inn restaurant and campground, spent much of the week staying indoors and using a nasal inhalant, but still coughing and struggling to breathe because of bronchial asthma and an allergy to smoke.

"Smoke is really hard on me," said Beaudette, who wore a face mask at night, when cooler air and decreasing winds causes smoke to settle over the forest.

But even Beaudette was philosophical about her physical distress, which improved as weather conditions changed Friday. "It's way better today," she said. "But I would rather have this for just a few days than a wildfire that would be much worse," she said.

Crews burned 465 acres Friday - by far, the largest amount of ground burned in one day this week - but changing weather fronts tended to move the smoke to the north and west, away from Rapid City.

Beaudette has owned the campground for 20 years, and she remembers the Horse Creek prescribed burn of 1992 that got away from fire crews. "You never know," she worried.

District Ranger Bob Thompson assured Beaudette and the rest of the public that the Bullock burn was always well contained and controlled, even as it produced an impressive amount of smoke and fire. "It looks way worse than it is," Thompson said of the plumes of smoke that sometime rose high, sometimes hung low and heavy.

The Forest Service's ability to predict weather conditions and its control protocols for prescribed burns are much improved from just a few short years ago, Thompson said. This summer's abundant moisture, which kept some grasses from burning Friday, along with the rain expected for this weekend, made for near-perfect conditions for a prescribed burn, he said.

Thompson said he appreciated the public's understanding that prescribed burns were a necessary inconvenience if it wants to reduce the impacts of more devastating, and more dangerous, wildfires.

"We can't stop wildfire, but we can make it as safe as possible for fire crews to battle them," he said.