UPDATED: Keeping Las Conchas Fire Out of Canyons is Main Priority

The wildfire was burning through the ski area throughout the day, and will be the main priority throughout the night for crews, he said.

Although he was more optimistic this morning, Tucker confessed that the crews “didn’t win as much as [they] hoped” today.

Still, the fire did not come much closer toward Los Alamos, he said. One ridgeline near State Road 501 came closer, but nothing else spread toward the city.

Tomorrow’s efforts will focus on hardening the lines near the ski area and State Road 501.

“We have to get an anchor between the canyons and upper ridges,” Tucker said.

The fire, which is considered the highest priority fire in the United States, was rumored to have started over a downed power line, though the cause is still under investigation.

4:36 p.m. A team of six firefighters from Kirtland Air Force Base and emergency physicians will be assisting at the Las Conchas wildfire in Los Alamos.

The Kirtland AFB team’s focus will be on protecting structures in the area, using a structural pumper and fire water tanker to support firefighting efforts, a news release said.

Meanwhile, UNM’s EMS Medical Consortium team, with support from area nurses, physician assistants and occupational therapists, will take 12-hour shifts in the Los Alamos Medical Center as part of the state Emergency Operations Center at the request of New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez.

The California Air National Guard have also joined in the fight against the fire in Los Alamos.

2:25 p.m. The mandatory evacuation of Los Alamos wasn’t exactly mandatory.

The National Guard and police aren’t forcing people out of their homes here, and at least 31 people stayed behind Monday night in what’s being described more and more as something like “a ghost town.”

“Last night was very spooky,” said Gail Lance, who lives on Trinity Drive and was still in her home Tuesday, the day after Las Conchas Fire hit the Pajarito ski hill and triggered a full-blown evacuation of Los Alamos.

“The National Guard was driving around and it felt like it was a movie scene or something,” Lance said.

Police say they are taking names and addresses of the stay-behinds and will help get the residents out, should Las Conchas wildfire roll into town.

12:43 p.m. U.S. Sen. Tom Udall said at a noon press conference that he has asked the federal Environmental Protection Agency to monitor air quality as a result of community concerns about smoke from the wildfire threatening Los Alamos and its national laboratory that works with radioactive materials.

Udall said he knows people in the region are “concerned about what’s in the smoke” from Las Conchas wildfire burning near Los Alamos National Laboratory. Udall said he doesn’t question the lab’s own air monitoring systems but that the with the EPA there would be three levels of oversight – state, lab and EPA – so that the public can be assured of having good information about air quality.

Lab director Charles McMillan said at the same news conference that as far as any problem releases from the fire, “there haven’t been any.”

“Let me say that again – there hasn’t been any,” McMillan said.

He reiterated that the Area G waste storage area is about two miles from the fire. He said he was confident that fire teams can protect lab facilities, which he said have been the subject of extensive fire mitigation efforts since the 2000 Cerro Grande fire that burned through Los Alamos.

The only fire on the labs site so far was an acre blaze on Monday in Water Canyon on Technical Area 49, McMillan said, which has since been extinguished.

No structures have been lost in the wildfire, according to Los Alamos County Fire Chief Doug Tucker, and firefighters are prepping Pajarito and Los Alamos canyons as a preventative measure.

Crews fought spot fires on the Pajarito Ski Hill last night, and flames near the lodge are now extinguished.

“If the winds stay, we’re OK,” Tucker said. “Things are looking good.”

Winds could easily change, however, he said, and there is the potential for the fire to move toward Jemez. Tucker said the fire could still grow to twice or three times its current size.

11:56 a.m. AccuWeather.com reports the weather will remain troublesome for crews battling the wildfire threatening Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico over the next few days.

Although an increase in humidity early Tuesday morning has been a short-term benefit, a storm system passing by to the north will kick up daily rounds of gusty winds through Thursday.

Winds across the Southwest each day through Thursday will generally be sustained at 20 to 30 mph with gusts near or past 40 mph in some places. Wind direction will be out of the south to southwest in most areas.

Dry thunderstorms could also develop across northern and western New Mexico as well as eastern Arizona over the next few days, threatening to spark new wildfires.

11:24 a.m. Los Alamos County and LANL officials will hold a news conference at noon updating the public on the Las Conchas wildfire. Gov. Martinez will speak at the conference, according to KOAT.

UPDATE: 11:00 a.m. (AP) — A vicious wildfire spread through the mountains above a northern New Mexico town on Tuesday, driving thousands of people from their homes as officials at a government nuclear laboratory tried to dispel concerns about the safety of sensitive materials.

The wildfire — which has swelled to about 93 square miles — sparked a spot fire at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on Monday. The fire was quickly contained, and lab officials said no contamination was released and radioactive materials stored at spots on the sprawling lab were safe.

No fires burned on lab property overnight, but teams from the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Radiological Assistance Program were headed to the scene to help assess any nuclear or radiological hazards, said Kevin Smith, Los Alamos Site Office manager.

“The … teams’ work will provide another level of assurance that the community is safe from potential radiological releases as the fire progresses,” Smith said in a statement.

The lab will be closed through at least Wednesday, with only essential employees permitted back onto laboratory property.

The wildfire has destroyed 30 structures south and west of Los Alamos, for many stirring memories of a devastating blaze in May 2000 that destroyed hundreds of homes and buildings in town. About 12,500 residents have been evacuated from Los Alamos, an orderly exit that didn’t even cause a traffic accident.

Flames were just across the road from the southern edge of the famed lab, where scientists developed the first atomic bomb during World War II. The facility cut natural gas to some areas as a precaution.

The streets of Los Alamos were empty Tuesday with the exception of emergency vehicles and National Guard Humvees. The neighborhoods were quiet, but there were signs that homeowners had left prepared. Propane bottles were placed at the front of driveways and cars were left in the middle of parking lots, away from anything flammable.

Some residents decided to wait out the fire, including Mark Smith, a chemical engineer who works at the lab. He’s not concerned about flames reaching the lab’s sensitive materials.

“The risk of exposure is so small. I wouldn’t sit here and inhale plutonium. I may be crazy but I’m not dumb,” he said.

The lab, which employs about 15,000 people, covers more than 36 square miles and includes about 2,000 buildings at nearly four dozen sites. They include research facilities, as well as waste disposal sites. Some facilities, including the administration building, are in the community of Los Alamos, while others are several miles away from the town.

The spot fire scorched a section known as Tech Area 49, which was used in the early 1960s for a series of underground tests with high explosives and radioactive materials.

Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said environmental specialists were monitoring air quality, but the main concern was smoke.

Lab personnel are monitoring the air for radionuclides and particulate matter. The lab also has monitors that can be used to check for possible radiation contamination from the fire.

The New Mexico Environment Department is monitoring the air for radioactive particles and tritium using low-volume air pumps. The state is also working with the Environmental Protection Agency and the lab to get additional ground-based monitors and an airborne monitor.

He said that the lab has taken many steps to prepare for a wildfire, including thinning trees and underbrush and surrounding key buildings with gravel to create a defensible space. Many of the buildings are also constructed to meet strict standards for nuclear safety and aggressive wildfires are taken into account, he said.

The anti-nuclear watchdog group Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety said the fire appeared to be about 3.5 miles from a dumpsite where as many as 30,000 55-gallon drums of plutonium-contaminated waste were stored in fabric tents above ground. The group said the drums were awaiting transport to a dump site in southern New Mexico.

Lab officials at first declined to confirm that such drums were on the property, but in a statement early Tuesday, lab spokeswoman Lisa Rosendorf said such drums are stored in a section of the complex known as Area G. She said the drums contain cleanup from Cold War-era waste that the lab sends away in weekly shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

She said the drums were on a paved area with few trees nearby and would be safe even if a fire reached the storage area. Officials have said it is miles from the flames.

“These drums are designed to a safety standard that would withstand a wildland fire worse than this one,” Rosendorf said.

A crew that had been working at the Arizona wildfires took over efforts at the New Mexico fire Monday, about 18 hours after the blaze started.

Another firefighting team was expected to arrive Tuesday because of the potential for the blaze to more than double in size.

“That’s the biggest threat we have right now to homes in the community,” Deputy Los Alamos County Fire Chief Mike Thompson said late Monday of the spot fires that left hillsides above the town of Los Alamos glowing.

Thompson said containment lines created by firefighters have held despite strong wind.

“We’re pretty confident on that front,” he said. “We’ll pre-treat with foam if necessary, but we really want the buildings to stand on their own for the most part. That is exactly how they’ve been designed. Especially the ones holding anything that is of high value or high risk, for the community, and really, for the rest New Mexico for that matter.”

Many in the area said the current blaze reminded them of the 2000 fire that blackened about 73 square miles and destroyed hundreds of homes and buildings in the western part of the town.

“It took out all the trees and all of the greenery, and it’s just now starting to come back,” said Terry Langham, a retired lab technician whose house survived the 2000 fire. “Now, it’s going to get burned again.”

He said that wildfire in 2000 left a “burn scar” that will likely push the current blaze “a little more rapidly through the area.”

The 2000 fire prompted the lab and residents to cut down trees and take other fire-prevention measures, and firefighters were hopeful that would help.

“Well, you never are safe when you have such a dry situation and you have fuel load and you have vicious winds like this,” said Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., who visited evacuees at the Santa Claran Hotel Casino in Espanola. “When you combine all of those together, (it’s) very explosive.”

Local and Type 1 fire crews were continuing their efforts to contain and control the Las Conchas Fire as it approached the Ski Hill area this morning, and officials now estimated the fire to

Gov. Susana Martinez late Monday night said she can't ban firework sales.

be at approximately 60,000 acres, according to a Los Alamos County news release.

KOAT-TV was reporting the new acreage number as 60,740 acres, and Forest Service spokesman Larry Lujan confirms that number with the latest posting on the fire on nmfireinfo.com. The fire remains zero percent contained.

At a 6 a.m. briefing this morning at the Emergency Operations Center, on-the-ground reports from firefighters described spotting fires in the Pajarito Mountain vicinity, according to the county news release.

“There is fire across the Ski Hill, a slowly creeping fire across the top of Pajarito Canyon, rimming fire near Camp May, and fire on Pipeline Road. The Ski Lodge can be saved and that’s why we’re there now, preparing the buildings,” officials said. “We are confident that we can protect structures because of the strike teams we have in place.”

(9:30am UPDATE: U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will be in New Mexico and Arizona on Wednesday to tour areas impacted by recent wildfires, to meet with U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service staff and other incident response personnel to discuss USDA’s efforts to provide assistance.

Vilsack is expected to hold a press briefing at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Sheraton Albuquerque Airport Hotel in Albuquerque, then tour wildfire-affected areas starting from the Apache-Sitgreaves Hoyer Campground outside Greer, Ariz., in the afternoon.)

Here is a report filed earlier this morning from Los Alamos by Albuquerque Journal reporter Phil Parker who is on the scene:

LOS ALAMOS - As the sun rose on one side of the Los Alamos sky this
morning, the other side was filled with enough smoke to give a hazy,
ghostly quality to the mountains above this deserted town.
The smoky streets were barren following Monday’s mandatory evacuation,
though the occasional police cruiser or National Guard Humvee could be
spotted driving through town.
On Los Alamos National Lab property, a fresh shift of fire fighters
began getting briefed at 6 a.m., before crews were sent in different
directions to assist in battling the blaze.
From the entrance to the lab near Omega Bridge, smoke could be seen
billowing off Pajarito Mountain, the ski hill above Los Alamos.
Officials have said they ordered the mandatory evacuation once the
fire began burning there.
Fire fighters worked overnight in the ski area to head off Las
Conchas. LAFD Assistant Fire Chief Mike Thompson said night-time
conditions worked in fire fighters’ favor.
“Because of the humidity, the fire’s activity was pretty low last
night,” he said. “We were able to get in there and get little hot
spots here and there.”
Thompson said areas previously burned by the Cerro Grande Fire are
burning again, though those sections will burn quickly and won't
produce excessive embers. Crews are focusing on keeping Conchas out of
Los Alamos Canyon, which runs along lab property and into town.
Cerro Grande struck 11 years ago, scorching almost 50,000 acres and
burning hundreds of homes in Los Alamos. The town was evacuated then,
as well.
A few residents remain in Los Alamos, including volunteers at Los
Alamos Elks Lodge 2083, who’d been up since 4 a.m. preparing breakfast
for National Guardsman, police and firefighters.
“We did this during Cerro Grande,” said Eppie Trujillo, secretary for
the Elks, which he called a fraternal order focused on charity for the
community. “We’ll feed the firemen and anyone else who needs it.”
Much of the food they'll cook is donated by the Smith's grocery store
in Los Alamos, Trujillo said.
Trujillo said he and 12 other volunteers at the Elks Lodge have
ensured their families are safely out of town. They've put out the
word that there's food at the lodge, and taking turns standing along
the sidewalk outside to wave in passersby. They did the same during
Cerro Grande, Trujillo said.
“It feels different this time,” said Trujillo. “I don’t see as many
emergency personnel as last time. It doesn’t seem like there is the
intensity and attention like we had last time. It’s just like ‘Los
Alamos has another fire.’”

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5:35am 6/28/11 — Flames Threaten Renovated Bandelier Visitor Center

BANDELIER NATIONAL MONUMENT (AP) — A wildfire that broke out west of Bandelier National Monument is threatening the renovated visitor center.

Los Alamos County fire chief Doug Tucker says the fire that broke out Sunday has the potential to grow much larger than its roughly 50,000 acres and is within a half-mile of Bandelier.

The blaze forced the closure of the monument that’s nestled among pine trees and canyons south of Los Alamos. Los Alamos itself was ordered evacuated Monday.

Officials unveiled the $4 million renovated visitor center last August after nearly a decade of careful consultation with neighboring pueblo. The remnants of American Indian settlements line the floor of Frijoles Canyon and are carved into its walls.

Tucker says the National Park Service is removing some artifacts from the monument as a precaution.

Meanwhile, Hummingbird Music Camp in Jemez Springs is reporting that the camp is not currently in danger or threatened by Las Conchas Fire, that the fire is currently burning away from the camp and air quality is clear, according to nmfireinfo.com.

Officials at the music camp say that in case the situation changes and an evacuation becomes necessary, the latest alerts and information will be posted on local media outlets.

KOAT-TV is reporting this morning that the Santa Claran hotel in Espanola is full but there are still plenty of rooms available at the Cities of Gold casino hotel in Pojoaque.

To find discounts on hotels, families offering shelter or more information on resources available to evacuees, go to helplosalamos.com.

As of Monday night, the wildfire had burned a reported 43,624 acres, but the acreage will be updated first thing this morning based on infrared mapping overnight, so stay tuned to the latest on Las Conchas on nmfireinfo.com.