Latest news with #CerroGrandeFire
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
As drought threat looms, Los Alamos National Lab works to reduce its wildfire risk
Burned trunks from previous fires remain in the scrub oak brush and stands of aspens in the Jemez mountainside just overlooking portion of Los Alamos National Laboratory property. LANL leadership told media during a May 28 tour that they were taking steps to prepare and mitigate the risk of wildfires. (Courtesy of Los Alamos National Laboratory) As New Mexico water and fire managers prepare for increased drought and wildfire danger this summer, Los Alamos National Laboratory officials say the lab has taken steps to mitigate those threats on its campus. LANL provided a media tour mid-week to highlight those steps, but did not allow outside photography or recording. 'We're very proud of our preparedness efforts for wildfire,' said Deputy Laboratory Director of Operations Mark Davis from the floor of the Emergency Operations Center, as videos of the 2022 Cerro Pelado fire played across six screens on the wall. 'We want to show our efforts to communicate how our mitigation efforts will protect the lab, workforce, community and environment.' The state has identified the towns of Los Alamos and White Rock as high risk areas for wildfire threats, including LANL, which spans 36 square miles of mesas and canyons. The lab and surrounding town have been evacuated twice in the past 30 years due to fires. That included evacuations for two weeks during the Cerro Grande Fire in 2000, which burned 43,000 acres total, including 45 lab buildings and 7,500 acres of LANL property. Los Alamos evacuated for another 10 days during the 2011 Las Conchas fire, which burned more than 156,000 acres, though only one acre on the lab's property. In 2022, during the same time the Hermit's Peak-Calf Canyon fires raged, the Cerro Pelado fire, also caused by a controlled burn, sparked up and ultimately burned 45,000 acres, requiring the lab to move to remote work in preparation for an evacuation. In 2022, at the request of the Biden Administration, LANL released its Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment and Resilience Plan, which showed that increased wildfire presented the highest risks to equipment, electricity systems, onsite radioactive waste processing, buildings, water systems and communications systems. Critics say climate threats to the laboratory are compounding. LANL's proposed thinning is 'a slow job, but certainly necessary,' said Greg Mello, the executive director of nuclear nonproliferation nonprofit Los Alamos Study Group. But he said the hazards with climate change are stacking up. 'We just wish that the laboratory wasn't straining against every single environmental constraint that there is on that plateau,' Mello said. 'The laboratory is too big and trying to do too much in a place that was never appropriate for a laboratory of the present scale, let alone the additional laboratory facilities and staff that they envision.' The approximately 18,000 people employed at LANL work mostly in science and engineering, from modeling infectious diseases to increasing the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. 'Our missions are vital and critical to national security and they cannot fail,' Davis said. The Jemez wilderness bears scars from the Cerro Grande and Las Conchas fires. Large bald patches with skinny charred remains of the ponderosa pines stand among scrub oak brush replacing the once-forested area. Recent scattered rainstorms offered a small reprieve, but the area remains in Stage 1 fire restrictions — an elevated threat level that restricts all campfires or outdoor burning. Laboratory facilities are interspersed on the top of mesas to higher elevation ponderosa pine forests, separated by canyons and arroyos filled with brush. The lab is bordered by federally managed forests; San Ildefonso and Jemez Pueblos; and Santa Fe and Los Alamos County land. The patchwork of agencies has complicated firefighting and mitigation efforts in the past, said Jeff Dare, who leads the Emergency Operations Center, but Cerro Pelado offered a framework for more cooperation with members of county government and liaisons for surrounding federal agencies and tribal governments. The lab is part of the Master Cooperative Wildland Fire Response Agreement, which allocates additional resources such as helicopters and personnel to fight any wildfire that does appear, Dare said, adding: 'It protects the laboratory before it can get here.' The more recent focus has been trimming back the areas around lab buildings, roads and utility lines, said Richard Nieto, LANL's wildland fire program manager. Trimming has occurred on an estimated 12% to 15% of lab property. 'Hope is not a strategy,' Nieto said, adding that the area needs to better adapt to fires when they happen. 'This area was meant to burn; it's what we have to deal with, ecologically.' But overgrowth is a challenge. Much of the higher-elevation ponderosa forests sport 400 to 1,300 trees per acre, rather than the healthier 50 to 150 trees per acre, he said. Habitats for two endangered species and archeological sites also require consideration. Beyond trimming, the lab is working on developing plans for prescribed burns, but will take another three to five years to realize, he said. On the other side of lab property, fences looped with concertina wire and sporting signs warning of radiological hazards contain Area G. Vaguely merengue- shaped white tents — coated in fireproof material — stand amid the juniper and piñon scrub. Inside, under crisscrossed steel frames, stacked white containers on metal pallets contain legacy waste from the lab's work in the nuclear program. The facilities are geared to reducing fire concerns, said Gail Helm, the facility operations director for N3B, which is contracted to manage the 10-year $2 billion dollar cleanup of Cold War Era legacy waste. The tents include fire detection and suppression. Concrete barricades surround them to prevent vehicle accidents and potential fires. Under the Stage 1 fire restrictions, a water truck remains onsite at all times. To the west of Area G lies Technical Area 53, where the lab logs and stores new transuranic nuclear waste — such as gloves contaminated with plutonium — produced at the new plutonium pit production site. The waste is eventually disposed off-site at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project outside of Carlsbad. Thomas Vigil, the deputy group leader at the Chemical and Waste Facilities said LANL is doing 'its due diligence' to follow every protocol to keep the public and workers safe. 'This is my state, this is where we live,' he said. 'I live just down the road, and it's important to me.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
25 years later: Efforts continue to restore the forest after devastating fire in Los Alamos
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (KRQE) – Decades after a prescribed burn ripped through the Los Alamos mountainside, reshaping the landscape for generations, the forest has struggled to recover. While it will take decades, a conservationist group is helping to restore the area faster. 25 years later: A look back at the Cerro Grande Fire Twenty-five years after it was put out, the effect of the Cerro Grande Fire remains. 'Some of the largest burned areas were two miles wide and seven miles long in the middle of those high-severity burn patches, the nearest tree was a mile away,' said Steven Bassett, Director of Conservancy Programs, Nature Conservancy of New Mexico. In May 2000, an official spoke on the damage. 'In some cases, it's burned so hot that the ash is a foot deep or more, and in some places, the soil is sterilized and may even look like glass beads where the atomic bomb was first exploded.' About 48,000 acres burned in the mountains around Los Alamos. 'The fires not only killed the trees, but they also burned the soil and the seeds that were in the soil so the forest had a tough time recuperating and still has a tough time recuperating,' said Basset. While replanting can happen without human intervention, the destructive Cerro Grande Fire burned so hot that a natural process would take decades. 'Even with wind and water, and animals helping move those seeds into the burned area, it can take a very long time to see forest recovery, and then it's a very narrow band of the burned area close to that seed source,' said Basset. So, how do you replant a massive forest after a devastating fire? The Nature Conservancy has spent years replanting tens of thousands of seedlings in the Cerro Grande burn scar. 'The practices that are standard elsewhere don't really work here. We have extremely high seedling mortality when we're planting trees, and germination of seeds that are planted as well are low,' said Bassett. The state and the U.S. Forest Service are also ramping up seedling production for New Mexico with an expanded reforestation center in Mora, expected to eventually produce 5,000,000 seedlings per year. 'We're on the cutting edge of reforestation. We have experienced bad fires and we're also working together to build back from them… they're… a fact of life here in New Mexico and we have to do our best to prepare for them and respond to them when they happen,' said Bassett. To learn more about the Nature Conservancy and its projects in New Mexico, click this link. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
25 years later: A look back at the Cerro Grande Fire
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (KRQE) – At the time, it was the most destructive wildfire in New Mexico's history. So, how did the Cerro Grande Fire start, and how did it impact those who were living in Los Alamos and the surrounding areas at the time? On May 4, 2000, the National Park Service started a prescribed burn, but several critical errors were made before the fire started. 'They didn't plan for the level of complexity and the level of possibility of escape given the place where they were burning,' said Author Tom Ribe, 'Infero by Committee.' Ribe said that the crew that was working the fire was understaffed. 'Had they understood the complexity of what they were doing realistically and not made some key bad assumptions, they would have had a lot more people up there, or better yet, they would have said now is not the time to do this fire lets wait till fall when things are wetter,' said Ribe. According to a report, the fire burned quicker than expected, and with high winds, it grew out of control. 'This was described to me as a cloud, imagine a cloud filled with burning cigarettes, I mean, in as burning cigarettes, that cloud went over the fire line, and boom, like a bomb, exploded on the other side of the fire line,' said former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson in February 2025. The fire burned toward Los Alamos, and crews had a hard time staying in front of the flames. 'They set up fire lines to prevent the fire from going past the lines; they actually believe the fire jumped from a mile away in one of the hotspots, given the wind and the conditions,' said former Gov. Johnson in an interview in May 2000. 'In some cases, it's burned so hot that the ash is a foot deep or more. And in some places, the soil is sterilized and may even look like glass beads where the atomic bomb was first exploded,' said an official at a news conference. As the fire raged, the decision was made to evacuate Los Alamos on May 10. 'We start driving around Los Alamos, we're left, everyone's leaving Los Alamos, and there's literally fires starting in people's front yards, and I'm out there stomping out fires,' said Gov. Johnson in 2025. Crews from around the state worked together to battle the flames. 'They tell me 3,000 houses are going to burn that night in Los Alamos, which is just staggering. And I'm there, and I get emotional every time I talk about this, but that evening, early evening, in rolls dozens of fire trucks from surrounding communities into Los Alamos. And oh my gosh, I mean unbelievable, they drive in in a convoy and that evening basically, they spend the entire night putting out fires and I mean homes that burning but all those firefighters are out there putting out fires in people's front yards that would've spread to their homes,' said Gov. Johnson in 2025. In total, more than 48,000 acres and 280 homes would burn. At the time, it was the most destructive fire in New Mexico history. In 2011, the Los Conchas Fire was sparked in the Jemez Mountains from a downed power line. While people braced for the worst, the fire was stopped by the Cerro Grande Fire burn scar. 'It had two heads, one head went down into Bandelier and the other head went directly towards Los Alamos and if that head of the Los Conchas Fire had not run into the fire burned out area that was left behind by the Cerro Grande Fire, it slammed directly into Los Alamos and would have been a much more intense much more disastrous fire than Cerro Grande was,' said Ribe. In total, the Los Conchas Fire burned more than 150,000 acres. The Hermits Peak Calf Canyon Fire would burn more than 340,000 acres and more than 900 structures in 2022. It is now the most destructive fire in New Mexico history. It was started by the U.S Forest Service. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
