Bandelier Faces Flood Threat

BANDELIER NATIONAL MONUMENT – The historic Visitor Center for this northern New Mexico jewel in the national park system could be closed for as many as three years in the aftermath of the Las Conchas Fire.

Thousands of sandbags now line the walls and form a perimeter around Bandelier’s New Deal-era structures -making the main building look more like a fort or wartime bunker than a welcoming center – and officials say they won’t know what they’re in for until the rains come.

“We won’t know how long it’ll stay closed until we have a flood event or two,” said Rod Torrez, chief of interpretation for Bandelier. “Then we’ll know what’ll happen.”

The still-smoldering Las Conchas Fire burned 20,800 acres – about 62 percent – of Bandelier, with as many as 10,000 of those acres scorched severely enough to kill all vegetation and render the soil incapable of holding rainwater.

That means that whenever rain finally starts falling at more than a drizzle, it won’t take much to trigger a flood that could run right through Frijoles Canyon – where the monument’s centerpiece cliff dwellings and kivas are located – and into the Visitor Center. The stone buildings were constructed as part of a 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps project.

The Visitor Center was renovated, with an eye toward restoring its historic look, for about $3.2 million just last year.

Torrez said it takes about three years after a wildfire for roots to re-establish themselves and stabilize ground beneath trees and for plant life to grow back lush enough to prevent flooding.

“We’re really worried,” said Dorothy Hoard, president of the board of trustees for Friends of Bandalier. “We hope it doesn’t wash out. We’ve seen what happens in these canyons after fires, and it’s scary.”

Hoard was hiking the national monument’s Burnt Mesa Trail on Tuesday with Terry Foxx, a fire ecologist formerly with Los Alamos National Laboratory, who has been studying fire’s effects on Bandelier since before the La Mesa Fire in 1977.

Foxx said the burned areas around the trail are already showing signs of recovery – including foraging squirrels and some green plant life among the ashes. Burnt Mesa Trail is part of about 10 percent of the park that recently reopened for public use. For now, visitors are not charged an entry fee.

Foxx said the forests in Bandelier are “overgrown” and “decadent.”

“When a fire comes and cleans them out, that’s better,” she said.

But while the fire may actually improve conditions in the long term, the short-term flood potential could keep the Visitor Center and many of its premier attractions in Frijoles Canyon closed down.

“It’s a real bummer, because everything’s still intact,” Torrez said. “It’s just we can’t take the risk of bringing visitors down here.”

Major flows possible

Frijoles Creek, which snakes through the canyon near the Visitor Center, typically runs at about 20 cubic feet per second in midsummer, Torrez said.

But Burned Area Emergency Response crews have surveyed the Las Conchas damage in Bandelier and predict significant rainfall could cause a flash flood that would cruise at speeds expected to be 3,000-5,000 CFS – and flows could reach 15,000 CFS in a worst-case scenario.

That level of water would make the creek temporarily into a major, raging river. By comparison, the average peak flow of the Rio Grande over the past decade at the Taos Junction Bridge is 2,265 CFS.

After the La Mesa Fire, a 3,000-CFS flood event did reach the Visitor Center and caused minor damage.

Boulders as heavy as 20 tons can be carried through the canyon by floodwaters, Torrez said.

He paused Tuesday where a bridge over Frijoles Creek had to be demolished.

“When you’re getting trees, rubble and ash in the streambed, bridges are potential dam sites,” he said. Busting out the bridges “allows material to actually flow through,” he said.

In all, eight bridges in Frijoles Canyon had to be demolished and removed.

Picnic tables were among the debris that washed through Frijoles Canyon after the La Mesa Fire, Torrez said.

Two crews of 20 firefighters each spent two days last week filling and stacking 14,000 sandbags around the Visitor Center.

Seven hundred feet of concrete Jersey barriers, typically used along highways, also surround the buildings. “I feel like I turned around and all of a sudden all this was here,” Torrez said of how quickly the mitigation pieces were put into place. “They (the crews) were amazing.”

The center has been cleared of all artifacts that had been on display, including ancestral pots and paintings.

The area has a history of fire going back much further than the 1970s.

Bandelier is filled with cultural sites dating to as long ago as 1100, Torrez said. The Tyuonyi Pueblo structure in Frijoles Canyon was built centuries ago and features the ruins of about 200 rooms, Torrez said.

It sits above where a devastating flood can reach, as does the below-ground Big Kiva. Cave dwellings along canyon walls, decorated with petroglyphs, are high enough that floodwaters won’t touch them.

“It’s amazing how they knew where they were safe,” Torrez said.

So as the monument braces for what could be a long wait to completely reopen, officials can at least be sure its oldest attractions are out of danger. Fire damage and flood danger were apparently being assessed long before any Visitor Center was built here.