The Las Conchas Fire continues to rage near Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory, growing to 70,000 acres in three days, and sparking spot fires at Technical Area 16 (TA-16) which houses tritium. Yesterday, a sudden temperature inversion caused smoke to drop suddenly into our valley, inundating the health facility in which I work.
I took pictures of the advancing wall of smoke which are posted after the jump, and then headed out to a town hall to question our Governor, Congressman and other officials.
First, the smoke.
I work at the Rio Arriba Health Commons, a brand new, state of the art health facility that sits at the highest point in the town of Espanola. I jokingly call it the Health Care Palace. On a normal day, the sky is an unfathomable shade of blue.
This is the usual view from my office:
Yesterday, I had been working busily at my desk trying to ignore my buddy Elena's frequent shouted fire, radiation and general disaster updates, when I looked up and noticed what appeared to be a column of smoke rising from the east side of Espanola.
I interrupted Elena's doom and gloom report. "Hey you guys!" I yelled. "Have you looked out your window? Is there another fire in Fairview?"
Everyone rushed to the windows. "Holy cow!" shouted Amber. "Is my house on fire?" Amber, Melissa, Kathy and Elena all lived in Fairview under the menacing column of smoke.
"It could be coming down instead of going up," I suggested. "I'll call Mateo and ask him."
Mateo DeVargas is our Emergency Management director.
Mateo is like a large brown bear. He hibernates in between emergencies, avoiding unnecessary activity unless it involves whoopie cushions.
But when the gas is out or the forest is burning he leaps into motion, transforming simple conference rooms into emergency ops centers. Telephones, radios, blankets, emergency shelters, and firemen seem to spring from his head. Suddenly he knows where everyone and everything is and is communicating with them all at once via simultaneous radio and cell phone transmission. He works 24/7 until the emergency subsides and then slips into somnolence again.
I picked up the phone to dial and then glanced out the window. "Does it seem to you as if that wall of smoke is getting closer?" I asked Amber.
"I haven't heard anything about a new fire," said Mateo, when he answered. "I'm just coming down from Los Alamos. I was at the Emergency Ops Center there. You know, I see it. From here it looks like the smoke is settling in Espanola."
"It seems to be getting closer," I told him. "A few minutes ago, we had visibility to five miles. Right now, I'd guess its about three. According to all that data I've seen, a three to five mile visibility range poses a danger to people with respiratory conditions, young children, pregnant women and the elderly. One to three miles is dangerous to everyone. And less than one mile is a serious health hazard. Do you think we should be evacuating people?"
"Where we gonna evacuate 'em to?" he asked. "The wind keeps changing. We can't drive 'em around in circles."
I didn't answer him. "Let me make some calls and get back to you," he suggested.
"Okay," I agreed. "I'll call Dr. Bjorkklund and see what he thinks." Dr. Bjorklund is the medical director of the primary care clinic in the Health Commons.
"Maybe we should look outside," suggested Amber. We filed out of my office and through the side door. Our eyes stung and we began to choke.
"Holy shit!" yelled Tina. "My car's covered in ash!" Ashes and pine needles whipped through the air and a heavy wind started to gust. We rushed back indoors.
I got Dr. Bjorkland on the phone. "The visibility has decreased to about a hundred yards," I told him. "We can barely see the fence around the parking lot."
"You know it is extremely concerning," he told me. "Half the people sitting in our waiting room are vulnerable. I think the best thing we can do is to keep them in the building as long as possible and hope the smoke subsides. They're much safer inside an air-conditioned building than they are outdoors. I'll have staff distribute masks."
By now people were coughing. The building smelled strongly of smoke and we couldn't see anything at all out the windows.
A nurse came by distributing masks. "Dr. Bjorklund told us to hand these out," she said.
"Maybe we could sleep here," suggested Elena. "We could pretend we're camping."
Later that evening, I went to a Town Hall. Congressman Lujan, Governor Martinez, Los Alamos County Councilors, Forest Service Officials and Firefighters discussed their efforts to contain the fire and answered questions from the public.
A few individuals expressed concern about possible radiation in the smoke. Everyone in the room stood up and cheered when the Governor was asked to ban fireworks over the fourth of July. The Governor stated that she did not have the legal authority to do so. The Speaker of the NM House stood up and announced that she would be given the authority. Somebody announced that the owner of the fireworks tent in Pojoaque had voluntarily closed down. However, as far as I can tell there are multiple fireworks tents operating throughout the area. It is illegal in NM to ban fireworks and municipalities are only allowed to ban the kind of fireworks that shoot into the air.
A new fire started in Lincoln County in Southern New Mexico and quickly spread to 60,000 acres.
Here are the facts as we know them:
The fire has spread to 90,000 acres; today, encouraged by high winds, it roared onto Santa Clara Pueblo where it threatens the tribal watershed.
The fire briefly spotted into Los Alamos Canyon, a fuel dense funnel into the town and lab. Fire crews extinguished the blaze quickly.
Two Type 1 Incident Management Teams have been flown in to battle the blaze. There are only 16 Type 1 teams in the nation. They bring air support and other critical resources to battle the blaze. They are battling the fire from the north to protect Los Alamos, Santa Clara Pueblo, and the lab, and from the South to protect Cochiti Pueblo. The presence of the Nuclear Laboratory makes the Las Conchas fire the highest priority fire in the nation.
The Lab, the state Environment Department and the Department of Energy have placed radiation monitors throughout the state, and the feds have flown in a special plane that monitors radiation from the sky. So far we are informed that radiation levels in the air are normal.
Firefighters have burned a 100-600 foot wide perimeter around vulnerable portions of the laboratory to prevent the fire from breaching the lab.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation. The leader of the Type 1 Team, Joe Reinarz, stated that it appears as though a tree fell on a power line. The fire started on private land.
The lab is closed until at least Tuesday. Los Alamos has been evacuated. We don't know when residents will be allowed to return.