After the Los Alamos Fire:

In May, 2000, the Cerro Grande Fire burned 46,000 acres and caused the evacuation of 18,000 people from Los Alamos, New Mexico. Ignited as a prescribed burn by the National Park Service, the original fire was designed to reduce accumulated fuels and therefore lessen chances of a wildfire at Bandelier National Monument. It left over 400 families homeless and jeopardized national security when it burned 25% of the land and buildings of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Los Alamos County had been trying to implement a fuels reduction project in the face of substantial local opposition. Only five acres had been thinned before disaster struck, but treating those five acres saved several homes. Los Alamos residents, who can truthfully boast that the area contains more Ph.D.s (and double and triple Ph.D.s!) than any other place on earth, are proving that they learn quickly. The fire triggered several levels of federal assistance, and the community is taking advantage of the funding to rehabilitate burned areas and reduce future impacts of wildfires and other disasters. Most residents now wholeheartedly support the reduction of woodland fuels.

The federal government has allocated just under $11 million, to be disbursed through FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), for a multi-agency project to treat 1,200 acres of county land. Steve Coburn, Los Alamos County Fire Marshall, is the project officer of the Fuels Mitigation, Forest Restoration, and Fire Hazard Reduction Project. Bill Armstrong, representing the U.S. Forest Service, makes sure that the woods work is done in the manner most beneficial to the land and people. The project is based on a plan developed by the county, the Forest Service, and local residents.

“The Los Alamos fire was devastating for many people.” Chris Berti

Christopher Berti is a private consultant who works under contract to Los Alamos County as the Mitigation Project Manager. He tackled this job after working for FEMA for five years in the disaster-assistance cadre, where he project-managed over 70 multi-million-dollar projects.

“The Los Alamos fire was devastating for many people,” said the San Francisco native. “Some people lost everything they owned. It’s now two years after the fire, and the rebuilding is still going on. That’s a long time to have your life disrupted.”

At Los Alamos, Chris is responsible for grant management, program management, money management, and the development of mitigation projects. In addition to mitigation efforts on county lands, he also administers individual mitigation project assistance.

“We have funding to help people rebuild -- or improve their current homes -- in a more fire-resistant manner,” he noted. “Metal and concrete roofs and exterior sprinklers are some of the hazard reduction items that funds are available for. We’ve also learned that a very simple item -- screens -- can save homes. Some of the houses here actually burned from the inside. When the winds from the fire hit houses, it roiled around, creating drafts. Sparks were sucked inside, through attic and soffit venting. Just the addition of inexpensive screens at those vents could have saved some homes.”

According to Chris, there will also be money available -- averaging $2500 per home -- for creating defensible perimeters around homes by thinning, trimming trees, and removing pine needles. The fire also pointed out the need for more stringent building codes and other changes. “The plan calls for putting utility lines underground and constructing a seven-million-gallon gravity feed water tank,” he observed. “During the fire, the power had to be shut off because of the danger posed by above-ground power poles and lines. Unfortunately, cutting the power also meant that the town lost its water system. Burying power lines and having a large, dependable source of water will improve the town’s ability to deal with future emergencies.”

“The fire changed a lot of people’s views.” Chris Berti

The plan also contains a five-year fuels reductions program. To garner public support for the thinning, FEMA funded an eight-minute video, set up a demo area so that residents could see what thinned areas would look like, and aired commercials to educate the community about the benefits of reducing fuels. Chain saw work is being conducted by a 35-man team composed of off-duty firefighters as well as the Santa Fe Hot Shots.

“We’re using the lessons of the fire to protect the community in the future,” said Chris. “We’re trying to break up continuity, so if fires start in the canyons, they won’t threaten the town.”

He noted that “The fire changed a lot of people’s views, and they now understand the importance of ‘defensible perimeters’ around houses. They also realize that fireproofing private property won’t always do the job and that it’s important to ‘fireproof’ the forest -- and even the brushy terrain -- as much as possible to protect the town, the lab, and the homes.” He noted that the project is very sensitive to the needs of the community and to the environment. “To protect species of concern, especially the salamander and black-footed ferret, some work will be done only if snow is on the ground.”

Environmentalists who participated in the planning process were concerned about possible soil compaction from the equipment. This canyon and mesa country was formed by two violent eruptions -- each six hundred times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens -- of the Jemez Volcano over one million years ago. The volcano covered a four-hundred-square-mile area with a layer of volcanic ash up to one thousand feet deep, and rock from the eruption has been found as far away as Nebraska! The canyons have evolved from the erosion of packed ash.

Meeting the New Challenges
Canyons and mesas are covered with ponderosa pine, pinion pine, scrub brush, and grasses, which help to stabilize the soil. Once fire removed the ground cover, however, the volcanic ash became dust that is often ankle-deep. A more pressing concern would perhaps be the amount of volcanic ash that will be carried down to the canyon bottoms after the rains.

Enviro Land Management LLC (ELM), owned by Dave Dodd of Grand Junction, Colorado, secured the bid for a portion of the work being done at Los Alamos. ELM was formed specifically to meet the challenges of working on forest restoration and protection projects. The company’s assets include a wide range of equipment adaptable for the varying terrains and processes required on different types of projects.

Bruce Many of Dakota Logging, based in Cedaredge, Colorado is the subcontractor. ELM and Dakota Logging have jointly performed several projects, and the two companies have quickly earned a reputation for the excellent quality of their work.

The Los Alamos project includes the processing of about 80 acres of trees, most of which were burned. Bruce plans and supervises the work, and operates all of the equipment as necessary. He cut and stacked some of the trees with a 425D Timbco equipped with a shear head. Father and son team Bill and Kirk Gray, of Olathe, Colorado, ferry the logs with two Timberjack fowarders and grind them with a Peterson Pacific wastewood recycler, which offloads the chips into a trailer. The chips are hauled, often by Bill and Kirk, to Albuquerque.

To process the majority of the trees, Bruce attached a Quadco mulching head to the Timbco. With this head, he either cuts off the top of the tree or just lays the head on the top. The head then mulches the trees right down to the ground.

Mulching Saves Treated Ground
The chips from the mulching head can rocket as far as 300’ away, and an important part of the job entails making sure that people aren’t injured. Bruce has to stay very alert to unauthorized people within the danger zone. “Most people have never seen this type of machine work before, so they stop on the street below to watch,” he said. “Others are hikers who are accustomed to walking or jogging on the trail that runs through here. They have no idea of the dangers posed by this mulching head.” The area is marked off with flagging tape, but even so, Chris spends time patrolling with his Kawasaki Mule and escorting people to a safe distance.

The chips created by the Quadco head, along with some tops and miscellaneous branches, are left where they lie to provide stability for the ground and the future planting of seedlings. That ground cover proved its worth in a heavy June 21 rain. While residents were relieved to finally get moisture, much of the burned land suffered as the volcanic ash headed downhill. Forest Service land, above the county land where Bruce is working, has not been treated since the fire. The rain loosened trees up to 80’ tall there (one was even 3’ in diameter!) and sent them cascading down arroyos. Log jams formed in the curves, clogging arroyos. The county land where Bruce left materials on the ground, hoever, remained stable.

“There won’t be many decent-sized trees here for a couple of decades." Bruce Many

Bruce, who has logged for almost 20 years, says that you have to retrain your mind for rehabilitation work. “It’s hard to adjust to turning all of these trees into mulch,” he said. “It would have been much better to log before the fire. That would have increased the chances of stopping the fire, and maybe left some green trees. As it is, there won’t be many decent-sized trees here for a couple of decades. The burned trees are being turned into the ground cover which is necessary for the fire rehabilitation -- instead of into the products that we all use. Even the firewood sellers don’t want this burned wood. And in addition to the devastation caused by the fire, the area will be very susceptible to flash-flooding and massive erosion until ground cover is re-established.

“It’s too late for these 46,000 acres,” he added, “but the people here realize now that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Los Alamos has learned from the fire, and the community is working hard to fireproof areas that escaped this fire.”

Some seedlings have already been planted. With the drought, volunteers with 5-gallon jugs of water strapped to their backs are hiking up the mountain to give each seedling two squirts of water each. “We have 30,000 more seedlings to plant,” noted Chris. “Some of them are about 18” tall now, but we’ll wait till August to plant, when there is a chance of rain or snow in the near future.”

Survive the Fire, Die From Drought, Bugs!
Bruce added that many Los Alamos-area trees that survived the burn are now dying from drought. “And bark beetles are going to be a major problem, too,” said Chris. “Beetles gained a foothold in the trees damaged by the nearby Dome fire, and they’re coming to Los Alamos now. Moisture in the trees in early June was 75% below normal. Trees have so little moisture that they can’t ‘pitch out’ the beetles.”

The Los Alamos project, the first of its kind on this scale, has been the subject of scrutiny by representatives from Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, and even Australia, as representatives of other areas visit to learn how to best mitigate or avoid the impacts of a catastrophic wildfire such as that suffered by Los Alamos. The work is being covered in a documentary which shows each phase of the project, and the local newspapers are also running articles. “Some days I spend a lot of time explaining to the media what we’re doing out here, and showing how the equipment and the processes can protect the land for the future,” said Bruce. “But it’s worth it. I hope that the lessons learned from this fire can help other areas to avoid similar devastation.”

The worst thing about the job, said Bruce, is the condition of many of the trees. “This work really should have been done last year,” he said. “When the mulching head touches some of these trees, they break into pieces, or uproot. Then I’m faced with mulching them on the ground, which is much more difficult and time-consuming, and really hard on the cutting teeth.”

According to Chris, the mitigation efforts are going very well. “I’m very pleased with Enviro Land Management, with the professionalism of the company, and with the work being performed by Bruce and the crew,” he said. “The recent rain shows that what we’re doing is the right thing for the land. We’re hopeful that the seedlings will take hold and that one of these days we’ll have a forest again.”

(Posted By: Angie Many | 16th July 2002 | 10:24:25 PM. )