A 60-90 percent bark beetle kill combined with limited thinning in the canyon areas, has the Los Alamos area officials concerned that the beetle-ravaged trees, known as "dead and red," will burn faster and hotter than green timber, creating a scenario that makes mass-evacuation difficult, even unsafe.
"The flats and mesa tops in the County and on Laboratory property are in pretty good shape from thinning operations," said Gene Darling of Emergency Management and Response at the Laboratory. "But most of the canyons have had nothing done to them, and combined with the bark beetle kill, I don't see us getting out of extreme fire danger conditions all season without significant rainfall."
Officials describe this fire scenario as a "different kind of danger" that calls for a different kind of planning and response. The fires are expected to be significantly smaller than the thousands of acres that are usually affected-as small as 200-300 acres-and much shorter in duration, prompting the call for a shelter-in-place which would typically last for only a few hours.
"What we mean by shelter in place," said Darling, "is that most people would be asked to simply stay home or in their offices during the fire situation. The Laboratory or the Los Alamos Fire Department would only move people directly affected by a localized fire, and would typically move those folks to a location nearby, but out of harm's way."
At Los Alamos Public Schools, students would be sheltered at their school or moved to a safe location at another school. School officials are asking parents to resist the natural inclination to come to the schools during a fire situation to pick up their kids.
"We have an excellent shelter-in-place plan, and we do not believe any of our schools are seriously vulnerable to fire under these current conditions," said Hugh Miller, emergency manager for the school system. "We will take care of the children as if they were our own, but we're worried that many parents will want to get their children home or try to evacuate, and that could lead to an even more dangerous situation than the localized fire."
As the school system enters the summer break, parents will no doubt be wondering how shelter-in-place will work with the many varied summer programs and daycare centers in the area. "The County will begin a coordination effort, to make sure as many of the private, public and religious summer programs and daycare providers as possible know what we mean by shelter-in-place and communicate to their parents what procedures they will undertake should we experience a fire this season," said Phil Taylor, Los Alamos County Emergency Management Coordinator. "Again we want residents to resist the impulse to quickly try and pick up their kids and begin evacuating."
The Los Alamos Fire Department warns that people clogging the roadways trying to evacuate could delay fire fighters and expose drivers to large numbers of emergency vehicles as they try to quickly respond, as well as putting motorists in direct danger. "During the fires in Oakland, Calif., a few years ago, many lives were lost in attempted self-evacuations-people dying in their cars as they tried to get away," said Taylor. "This fire season we do not foresee the need for a mass evacuation with the volatile fire conditions being somewhat restricted to the canyon areas."
Los Alamos County has more information on wildfire, shelter-in-place and evacuation on their website at http://www.lac-nm.us under the link for Emergency Management.
Los Alamos National Laboratory also has a website with information on wildfire protective actions at http://emr.lanl.gov and links to information from the Red Cross http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/beprepared/shelterinplace.pdf and the Federal Emergency Management Administration http://www.fema.gov/rrr/csepp4.shtm.
For additional information contact EM&R, 667-6211, Los Alamos County Emergency Management, 663-0883 or the Los Alamos School system, 663-2222.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) of the U.S. Department of Energy and works in partnership with NNSA's Sandia and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories to support NNSA in its mission.
Los Alamos enhances global security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health and national security concerns.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and Washington Group International for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.
Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.