New Mexico Fire Lessons

Dorothy Hoard

In Los Alamos, New Mexico, there is an organization - The Pajarito Environmental Education Center, known widely as PEEC. It was started in earnest after the horrendous Cerro Grande Fire in 2000 which burned more than 400 homes and put 1400 people in search of a new place to live. At that time, the fire was the largest in New Mexico history, but just last summer in 2011, another fire blew up in the Jemez mountains and swept towards Los Alamos at a fast pace, causing the town to be evacuated. Fortunately, much was learned after the 2000 fire. Back fires were set along major roads which were only possible because of an evening shift in the wind direction. Those back fires prevented the big fire from entering the town. New growth during the intervening eleven years went up in flames. That fire was the largest in New Mexico history, burning approximately twice as much land as the Cerro Grande.

This summer, 2012, a fire started in the Gila Wilderness in southern New Mexico and it is the largest in history, burning about four times the land area of the Cerro Grande.

This past Saturday, I went on a PEEC sponsored hike to see American Springs with naturalist Dorothy Hoard, author and guide extraordinaire. Along the way we could see trees that survived the Cerro Grande standing alone among the grasses. Below them were aspens that had regrown and were about eight feet tall. Last summer they burned again. Now tiny little aspens are a foot tall, growing from the ancient roots of their family, and fed by seeps like American Spring.

Dorothy reflected in the waters of American Spring

The actual spring has a concrete containment built around it, to hold the water in for a while before it seeps on down the hill. The containment was built sometime in the 1930's when a logging company needed water for its operations. Now there is about six inches of water and while it's not accessible to most animals, the larger grazers can put their heads through the hole for a drink. Other small seep puddles are open for the racoons, skunks, and squirrels.

Dorothy knows almost every plant; which are indigenous and which are invasive. She knows the geology of the entire region, and is an encyclopedia of information.

PEEC runs walks, tours, summer camps, and classes for adults and children all year round. Recently the county council agreed to spend four million on a new building to house the program. Up till now, PEEC has been run with donations of money and time, and was housed in an old elementary school building. Having a new expanded facility, which will include a planetarium, will allow PEEC to offer many more adventures in the quest for knowledge.

PEEC's website is here: http://www.pajaritoeec.org/

And of course, continued donations are gladly accepted, volunteers are welcomed.

Some dead trees from Cerro Grande (the sticks) and
some from last years fire (with branches still).

New growth around
last years burned dead aspens.

Portions of forest that survived two devastating fires.

A few Ponderosas that escaped
both fires, and are now "Mother"
trees for the forest.

Filling in a Fire Sandwich

At times we are glued to the computer for You-Tube videos, news bits, and published fire maps, trying from this great distance to figure out where we are in the threat to our town.

Gas station one block from my house. Photo
taken by a police officer on June 29.

As of this writing, late Thursday night, Los Alamos has been spared. This feat is entirely the work of crews setting back-fires, the huge water reservoirs that were installed after the last fire, the judicious use of water and human resources, and a lot of wise experience on the part of our local firemen and officials. I could not be more amazed at how the fire somehow managed to flow towards the west and hit the ski area and not the western edge of town, how the fire was stopped essentially at State Road 4 and did not encroach (much) onto lab property. It is a road I have traversed almost daily for 8 years. I know it by heart and it will pain me to see it wasted and charred. But on the north side of the road, it will appear normal; green Ponderosas towering above the canyon, interspersed with juniper and a few pinon, till the elevation diminishes and the junipers take the lead.

Of course there are rumors....we might return tomorrow, no, no, it'll be Sunday, ooops, wrong again - it'll be Monday. At this point, unless some twist of fate happens, the fire will be put out by rain, back winds, or lack of fuel as it runs into the previously burned area left by the Cerro Grande fire in 2000. It will end. And it will end as the largest and most destructive fire in New Mexico history, just as the recent Wallow Fire was the worst in Arizona's history. It's been a bad bad year. Right now about 15 more fires are burning elsewhere in the state, most of them caused by lightning.

I tried to go for a walk this morning, along the Bosque, just west of my friend Anna's home but I was turned back by the police. They have a portable substation parked at the trailhead and were not allowing anyone to go down the paved trails. Then later in the day, we heard of a fire in the Bosque, just south of here, in Tingley Park. I feel like I am in a fire sandwich, potentially being burned from two sides. The fire would have to jump a six lane bridge, Central Avenue, but it is conceivable we could end up evacuating from Anna's house too.

I'll be so glad when the monsoon rains start. The clouds built up today and then we experienced a typical New Mexico 4-inch rain.....4 inches between the drops!

Update on the Las Conchas/Los Alamos fire

Wednesday:  the day dawns beautifully in Albuquerque, cool, a slight breeze off the river, wild Mexican chickens - lean and mean - squawk madly while a Cooper's Hawk soars overhead. The tiniest chicks are hidden under chamisa bushes and prickly pear cactus pads. Binky is very happy living in Albuquerque where she has a walled backyard inundated with birds and lizards.

The whole town of Los Alamos was evacuated Monday afternoon. I was very happy to have been in the first wave of volunteer evacuees on Sunday night. So far the flames have stayed south of Lab property, with a few spot fires quickly put out, then it climbed up the back side of the ski area to burn over the top. The town is not yet out of the woods (so to speak!) and people are not allowed back in yet. About a thousand people have not evacuated and the police cannot force them to leave. One man was interviewed. He thinks there will be looters and he's staying put. They showed him on the TV watering his lawn with a little sprinkler. Looters? Wow. A fire can burn everything you own to the ground, and kill you too, and you're worried about looters? Does the man not have insurance? I am often astonished at how other people think, and what they are most worried about in life. Nothing I own, not one thing, is worth risking my life for. But having lost everything once before, I guess I now have a very different attitude about stuff.

After the last fire, when my son and I were truly homeless, all our possessions stuffed into a single minivan, my friend Laura came out of her house waddling under the weight of a huge box. She said "Here's some stuff. It's un-American to be without stuff!". I laughed till I almost cried. How American this guy is, this man risking his life to protect his stuff from looters. Looters who couldn't possibly be noticed (?) by the hundreds of police, firemen, and national Guard troops in town to protect everyone's property. Clearly the poor man has trust issues. I hope his descendants appreciate the risks he's taken to protect what he will eventually leave them in his will.

As for today, the fire is not under control, but it is also not as threatening as it was, nor are they quite as worried about the town going down in flames. No one is yet allowed back into town, but I suspect by Friday or Saturday, people will begin to go home. Surely life will be back to normal by Tuesday of next week.

My life at the moment is centered around carrying on with the trip planned last October for the 4th of July weekend. The Mountaineer's Club has an annual hut trek in Colorado. I have my pillow and sleeping bag in the car, a backpack I just keep in the car for emergencies with a first aid kit, water, space blanket, rain poncho and the like, and my hiking boots. All I really need to purchase are some long pants, socks, and a few other small items. The food I'd purchased for the trip is still at home, so will have to make another trek to the store. We are alive, our property is intact, life is good once again.

And it all hinges on the winds staying reasonably calm for the next few days. They are predicted to be quite high this afternoon......

Stay tuned.

Unexpected Travel....

Albuquerque, NM, June 27, 2011

Cumulus smoke rising.

My son and I evacuated our home in Los Alamos, NM,  last night. A wall of fire could be seen to the south, about 3 miles long. By 10:30 pm the winds had changed direction and the smoke was being blown towards the south, revealing the glowing forest punctuated by tall flames as groups of trees exploded like matchsticks.

We have done this before. When he was 9, on May 10th, 2000, we evacuated our home along with ten thousand other people, as police cars cruised by, loudspeakers blaring "Evacuate, Evacuate". This time, the authorities were suggesting people evacuate on a voluntary basis. My friend Rheta had packed her bags and was dashing back and forth to her car, eager to meet a friend in Pojoaque and go on to Taos to stay at her aunt's cabin. I said I didn't think it would come into town overnight, but she said "How can you be so sure?". On the way back to my condo, a block away, I could see flames on the ridge. All day long there was only heavy smoke billowing up like a cumulus rain cloud, now there were flames. I went into my condo and said to my son "We're leaving." It took about an hour to gather up the most important things: photo albums, the oil paintings, jewelry, the book containing the trust and all important papers. He packed a typewriter someone had given him recently. I objected for a second, but remembered how the last time I had told him to leave the Nintendo and games behind, only to discover later, after we lost everything, that one of the games had memory, so if we bought a new one, he'd have to play it for weeks to get back to the same 'place' he'd been before. It had broken his little 9 year old heart, so this time, I bit my tongue and told him to take whatever he thought was most important.

The cloud over the condo complex.

I'd removed the back seats (4) from the van weeks ago when I was camping in it, so we had lots of room and weren't even crowded. Binky did not appreciate the car ride and howled inside her cat carrier. As speed increased, so did the frequency of her howling.

Across the canyon: the labs and the glow.

We stopped at the trail head, just east of town to look back at the fire. The condo complex is right on the edge of the canyon between the Los Alamos National Labs and the townsite. All we could see from our condo was an immense column of smoke with flames at the bottom. By 10:30 pm, the wind had shifted and from the trailhead we could see the red glow, the flashes of shooting flames.....the extent of the fire was a swath about 2 miles wide. If the wind holds and the fire is blown back on itself, and IF the rains that are predicted for today materialize, the town should be in fine shape.

Lab buildings and a major flare. Scary stuff!!

So the plan for today is to stay in Albuquerque. I've called friends who stayed in town overnight. The wind is quiet. The labs, most businesses, and county offices are closed. Unless the winds start up again, and blow from the SW as they are usually prone to do, the town should be OK. On the other hand, should the wind shift and increase violently, the town could be in such immediate danger most people might have trouble evacuating. We are staying put.