Director urges employees to be safe
Laboratory Director G. Peter Nanos this week urged all personnel to put personal safety first.
With the arrival of winter also come cold temperatures, snow and potentially hazardous driving conditions. But employees also should practice other safety precautions, including in parking lots, walking to and from Laboratory buildings and making sure vehicles are equipped to handle winter weather conditions.
"While Laboratory personnel work hard to ensure worker safety during inclement weather, it must be remembered that all of us are responsible for safety," Nanos said. "If the weather where you are gives you pause, or if you don’t think your winter driving skills are up to the conditions, make the right call for you and stay home."
Staying home means an employee must use a vacation leave day if the Laboratory hasn’t announced a closure or delayed opening. But Nanos said it’s far better than days or weeks on sick leave due to a motor vehicle accident, a bad fall or worse.
"If you get to the parking lot and it hasn’t been cleared, or is icy or unsafe, don’t get out of your car," Nanos continued. He has tasked an internal group to address how time charging should be handled during the period it takes to make the parking lots or walkways safe. Their findings and any time-charging instructions that may result will be made available when their work is complete.
When it is snowing, Laboratory personnel can call the Update telephone hotline at 667-6622 or 1-877-723-4101 to find out the Lab’s operating status. The message on the Update hotline will change only if the Lab is closed or on a delayed opening. Area television and radio stations also are notified about the Laboratory’s operating status.
"Lab employees travel to Los Alamos from throughout Northern New Mexico, and even from as far south as Albuquerque, Belen and Los Lunas," Nanos said. "They come by bus, by carpool, by individual automobile and even by airplane. While I was living in White Rock, hearing the buzz of the ‘Los Alamos Air Force’ confirmed it was time to get moving.
"The snow storm on Nov. 29, and several recent personal injuries — some of them severe — to Lab employees due to falls on snow and ice, prompts me to remind everyone that regardless of whether the Lab is open or closed, everyone must take care and put safety first," he said. "We all have a personal responsibility to ourselves, to our families and to our coworkers to assess conditions where we are and to make the right call about whether or not to head out the door and up the hill to Los Alamos."
Nanos also suggested, in recent all-managers’ and LIM meetings, that employees keep footwear with appropriate soles in their cars, and even consider adding sand to their vehicle’s winter-weather equipment. And he reminded Lab workers to drive safely at all times, not only during inclement weather.
The Laboratory makes every possible effort to track and predict inclement weather in order to make an informed decision about delaying opening or even closing the Lab. However, as all meteorologists know, it’s entirely possible to predict slightly snowy weather, only to report later in the day about the unexpected blizzard that took everyone by surprise.
The Laboratory’s snow plan
When it snows, Emergency Management and Response (EM&R) follows a snow plan to determine whether or not to recommend that the Laboratory delay the start of operations or close for the day.
This is how the snow plan works: between 3 and 4:30 a.m., when it is snowing or when snow is expected, the EM&R duty officer receives a weather forecast from a Lab meteorologist and from other meteorological sources such as the National Weather Service. The duty officer also obtains road conditions from the KSL Services facility supervisor and snow removal duty officer, Los Alamos Police Department, Protection Technology Los Alamos, the State Police and the state Department of Transportation. Based on analyzing this package of information, the EM&R duty officer makes a recommendation for closure, delayed opening or a normal start time, usually by 4:30 a.m.
Laboratory management discusses that recommendation with local Department of Energy management at the Los Alamos Site Office, where the recommendation either can be approved or disapproved.
If the approved recommendation is for closure or delayed start, EM&R then calls a list of organizations with that information, usually completing its calls by 5 a.m. The 5 a.m. call-out deadline is intended to be early enough that most Laboratory commuters will get the word to delay or cancel before they start their drive to work. The Public Affairs Office manages the Update telephone hotline and notifies area radio and television news media.
The Nov. 29 snowfall
On Nov. 29, EM&R contacted the meteorologist at about 3:30 a.m. The forecast called for up to four inches of snow between 5 and 11 a.m. As predicted, the snow began to fall at about 6 a.m., and continued until just before noon. When it ended, five inches of snow had fallen at the official Los Alamos measuring station at Technical Area 6.
"Although overall this was not a very large snowfall," said Scot Johnson of Meteorology and Air Quality (ENV-MAQ), "two–thirds of it fell between 7 and 9 a.m., perfect timing to snarl the Monday morning commute." And, too late to allow a decision to delay or cancel work.
Another telephone number Lab workers should remember is 667-6611. This is the number to call to have facilities personnel respond to icy or snow-blocked sidewalks or parking lots. The 100-plus-person crew’s first responsibility is to clear arterial roads; after that, they head for secondary streets, parking lots and sidewalks throughout the Laboratory.
