Fire as Seen by a Wise, Old Man

Light had two sons, Sun and Fire. The older was everything a father could ask, dutiful, hard working, dependable. The other, like so many younger sons, was rebellious, impulsive, easily bored. Where his brother was wise, Fire was cunning.

Sun had a chum, Water, whose childhood rages moldered into sullenness as they grew into adolescence, for Sun would sometimes get into scrapes with girls, but Water would be the one blamed. Still it was Water who married and sired children, Thunder and Lightening.

Sun could never change his ways enough to go with a woman. He drifted into a fusty bachelorhood, doing the same thing day after day, year after year, eon after eon. He never questioned life, never thought much about the women who no longer flirted with him. His routine became all he craved.

His brother Fire also had an old friend, Wind, who was even more shiftless than he, and a daughter Smoke.

No one knows where Wind and Water came from. Some say they were children of Light’s slave women. Others that they were the unrecognized offspring of Light’s sister-in-law, a woman of uncertain virtue. The half-brothers were raised with Sun and Fire, but were always aware they weren’t quite part of the family.

There was also a sister, Moon, but no one thought much about her. When they were children Sun tried to boss her, Fire teased and taunted. She moved as far from them as possible, raised her children in darkness.

This story begins soon after the solstice in New Mexico the year Water took a long trip to the Mississippi where he was thinking of moving. In his absence, the earth had grown dry. Plants suffered. Some never bloomed. Some flowered only long enough to produce seed. Some simply stayed underground.

Fire had gone to Arizona. After losing a month long war with Joe Reinarz and the Feds, he was slowly limping home. He spent a week in Pacheco Canyon near the Nambé, then went to the Bosque to recuperate.

Wind was alone and bored. Walking through the forest, he kicked an aspen out of his way. It fell against a power line. From nowhere, Fire jumped over Wind to grab the line which sent sparks flying. The tree ignited. The line melted and fell to the ground.

Wind’s spirits revived. He and Fire romped through the woods. Fire picked up glowing balls of flame and lobbed them at Wind who blew them away. One landed on a golf course where they used dead branches to drive it from tee to tee. Fire scooped handfuls of charred needles and challenged Wind to blow them across the river.

The authorities saw them, thought they had damaged maybe 9,000 aces. Later they discovered, Fire and Wind had gone through more than 43,000.

Sun was appalled. He called Water for help. Water said no. Sun reminded him of all the wonderful things his father Light had done for Water as a child. Water was in a stubborn mood, would not be convinced. He liked it in North Dakota.

Sun told him how wonderful he was, told him he alone could help. Water had heard this before. With the Missouri rising he didn’t need Sun to flatter him.

Sun insinuated his mother would be disappointed if she knew Water refused such a simple request. Water was not persuaded, but did agree to send a subordinate.

Water’s lieutenant waylaid Smoke by the river, and as their bodies mingled a heavy dew rose to hide the damage of Fire. When Sun rose in the morning, only the highest flying birds could see what havoc Fire and Wind had wrought.

As Sun plodded through the day, his heat dried water from the mist. The dust grew invisible. Smoke rose again. Men who had sent out planes to fly with the birds learned what Sun had hidden. They summoned the man who had driven Fire from Arizona.

Fire too looked over the damage and saw he couldn’t do much more to the south without effort. He saw he was hemmed in up north by the scars they called Cerro Grande. He knew anything he did to the east would rouse the Feds. The west simply wasn’t amusing.

Fire knew the power of the men he was threatening and he knew the limits of the men who were coming.

Since Water was still refusing to leave the midwest, Fire called his son Lightening. Together they found a sheep ranch in Lincoln County owned by someone with power. Not as much as the men held in Los Alamos, but someone who knew everyone who was important. They started a fire on Sam Donaldson’s land that spread to the Mescalero Apache reserve.

With three highly visible blazes threatening three sovereign nations, Fire had time to plan. He watched the men send out their planes every night to measure the widening gyre of destruction. He listened to politicians and newscasters. He saw people flee Los Alamos and herd animals into trucks in Hondo.

He could turn his attention to his brother who was so utterly predictable. When he was engaged, Fire never ceased acting, but Sun would be growing weaker and vainer every day. Fire let him have his triumphs with the morning mist and noon clarity that fooled the Feds into thinking they were in control.

Then, each day, when Sun began to tire, Fire ordered Smoke to rise. A pink glow lay along the tops of the mountains, under the blue darkened by brown soot. Above the hottest part of the fire, Smoke turned pink, her edges gilded by the light. At dusk, she stood side by side with Sun, mocking the old man with her painted finery.

As Sun stooped lower, Smoke shot wisps his way. First Sun turned yellow, then red. As he sank below the mountains, Smoke slipped behind to prance in the last light. The place he left turned more brilliant than Fire himself.

In the night she returned to Water’s lieutenant by the river.

Fire was content with his second day.

He decided to stay low, let the flames spread where they would. He knew the Feds would be too occupied compiling the reports they needed to get reinforcements to do anything. He knew Water had probably found some old friends, was likely sitting around drinking somewhere in some rundown bar.

By night of the fourth day he was ready. The conflagration was nearing the upper edge of his last adventure in the area. The Santa Clara were upset, but he knew they didn’t understand the best way to deal with a man like Joe Reinarz who only counted buildings as wealth, not acequias or herbs.

He told Wind to be ready. This time they ran through the headwaters of the Santa Clara creek they’d missed ten years ago.

Smoke in her darkest dress spread herself across the mountains. As Sun raged, she covered him in scarlet, flaunted an orange ruffle. Wind bellowed.

When Sun finally retired, a white line appeared above Los Alamos, pulsing like Moon’s son, Northern Lights. Behind a thin veil borrowed from Smoke, an orange band glowed along the ridges.

Wind eventually got bored and went to sleep. Moon’s daughters in the Big Dipper came out. Smoke went down to meet the lieutenant. In the morning, Sun saw dew again covering what had happened.

The Feds were not happy. They don’t like being told they failed to protect something significant to a sovereign nation. They had already sent a new commander. Joe Reinarz was still there, but he had to answer to Dan Oltrogge, a man the lieutenant remembered from Hurricane Rita.

And so began the long battle between the Feds and Fire.

They brought in a psychologist to study Fire and predict his ways. Then they paid men from the valley to dig great earthen works to stop him. Sometimes, Fire would get so curious he would follow them. They were delighted they had him figured out. Other times, though, Fire could not be baited, would take a look, then walk off in some other direction. He had tripled his domain.

Some nights Smoke would meet her lieutenant. Other nights she would tease her Aunt Moon by turning her as red as she had her Uncle Sun. The haughty Moon would simply ignore her, continue on her path and, when she was beyond the reach of Smoke, call out her Star daughters.

Then there were the nights Smoke would be too disgusted by the soot smirching her veils. Then she left her soiled clothing on the mountains and retreated for the night. On those nights, the lieutenant tried to amuse her by conjuring small, white clouds from water he’d stolen from the fire fighters.

When Sun woke in the morning he would see a dark band stretching from badlands into the sky, cutting off the legs of those bright white pastries.

Other nights Thunder and Lightening would prowl, sometimes with the despondent lieutenant. One time they took out the power in the valley for six hours.

The worst nights for Sun were the ones when Fire would jeer at the Feds by throwing up spots of red for Los Alamos and the valley to see. Sometimes those dots would merge into lines, sometimes would diffuse into blurs. If the Feds could catch him, they would throw their suppressing chemicals at him. Usually, he was too fast, would start another flare before they had finished with the first.

The very worst were the evenings when Fire would watch men get into their trucks and start the long drive back to the valley. As they left, he would glower in their rear view mirrors.

Sun remembered the time Light had mused someday there might appear men so smitten with their own prowess they could no longer understand someone as unruly as Fire. When those men appeared, Light warned, it would not be enough to keep up appearances. Even Fire could do that. Sun must do more. Sun must maintain his standards.

Sun would rise every morning to tidy away the messes left by Fire and Smoke. By mid-mornings, the sky would be blue, the badlands would reflect back his light. In the cities people could believe what the Feds said, that Fire was at bay.

But Water remained in his drunken stupor. Nothing was there to stop temperatures from rising when Sun toiled so hard. When air on mountains born of fire would heat, the flames would also burn hotter.

At some time, Water will waken and call Wind to come get him. They’ll meet in some dive off the gulf coast, throw up another hurricane, then Water will ride back with Wind and finally listen to Sun. Fire will leave to recuperate at one his hot springs. The Feds will rush to the hurricane zone.

When this round of battles is over and Sun again rules supreme, no one will think about the forests where they fought. Sun will go on drying the ground. Fire will destroy what’s been weakened by drought. Water will dislodge the ashes so Wind can blow them away. Men who reseed will continue to think they’re in charge.

Nature alone will pick up the pieces. What else can she do? She needs Sun to feed her leaves, Water to feed her roots, Wind to fertilize her corn and other grasses, Smoke to sprout her seeds. She even needs Fire to periodically come through and clean her debris.

The Fire That Didn't Happen

What the forest service lost Thursday, June 30, when fire spread through lands of the Santa Clara pueblo, wasn’t a battle with fire. I’d learned from their own local website that all fire fighters can do with big fires is try to direct the flames away from human targets. It's always the hurricane fed monsoons that actually extinguish them.

What they lost was the trust people like me had developed last summer when their website gave honest reports on a fire in rough country in the Jemez to the north. That credibility had increased with their reports on the Wallow fire in Arizona and the Pacheco fire near Tesuque.

I wasn’t angry at any particular person, but at the display of cultural values that have been evolving in the decades since Ronald Reagan until they threaten to overwhelm any alternatives.



There was first the suspicion that the forest service was undermanned for a catastrophic fire season. Modern managers have learned to detest labor intensive enterprises and replace them with better managers of machines. Government doesn’t have to hire businessmen or business school graduates to get this attitude in their employees: it’s what the young absorb growing up.

A Congress willing to barter funds to help people whose towns were destroyed by tornados is only a culmination in a trend of budget cutting.

At its height the Wallow fire had something like 4,000 people fighting it. There were less than 800 with the Las Conchas fire Wednesday, before reinforcements arrived. That same day, there were still 1,320 people fighting the 538,049 acre Wallow fire, 530 assigned to the 10,116 acre Pacheco fire, and 326 fighting the 72,650 acre Donaldson fire started by lightening Tuesday in Lincoln county. And these weren’t the only fires burning in Arizona and New Mexico this week.

Realistically, there are only so many people the government can keep trained and ready for what is seasonal work. In the past, the National Guard would have been used as a highly disciplined additional resource. That stopped when George Bush the elder converted the National Guard into the regular army in Kuwait.

We learned the consequences of they’re not being available when hurricanes hit New Orleans in 2005, but we’ve only responded by deploying even more men overseas.

Our Tea Party supported governor has been willing to call them out, but either she or their commander can visualize no role for them greater than standing guard. That’s all they did for the first few days they were utilized when we had no power last winter. With this fire, their primary purpose seems to have been aiding the evacuation of Los Alamos. It was the sheriff and the state Livestock Board who helped move animals from dangerous juniper grasslands in Lincoln County.

The perception of modern business and modern warfare is that people can be replaced with machines, especially in situations were aereal support is more effective. The problem is various types of planes cost money to buy, require skilled crews to use and expend fuels that are sensitive to inflation.

The most recent incident reports indicate Las Conchas has18 helicopters, Donaldson has 5 helicopters and 3 air tankers, and Wallow has 2 helicopters and air tankers available if needed. The last update for Pacheco on June 28 indicated they had 9 helicopters.



It wasn’t simply the problems with not having enough resources to fight the fire that made me angry It was the outside managers who appeared to be more interested in protecting their careers than in fighting the fire, something that may have been necessary given the level of politicians and power involved when the lab feels itself in danger.

The local fire information website stopped being informative. Indeed, for a few days, we were directed to another website altogether, the national Incident Information System. At the bottom of each entry there’s a form with standard categories like Basic Information, Current Situation and Outlook. The second item includes Fire Behavior. Whoever has been updating the information has been including Fire Behavior for the Wallow, Pacheco and Donaldson fires, but not for Las Conchas.

Each day the fire fighters have been issuing maps of the fire based on the nightly infrared reconnaissance flights. One June 27 they issued both a PDF and a Jpeg (picture) version of the map. On June 28 the map was a Jpeg, on June 30 and July 1 they were PDF’s that were not readable by older versions of Adobe, and on July 2 they returned to Jpegs.

On Tuesday the 27th, the map showed the fire edge, location of previous fires, and points of intense heat where the fire was the most active and points of isolated heat where it may have been preparing to spread. Since the fire had not spread north of Los Alamos, no territory to the north was shown.

On Wednesday, the map still showed the areas of intense and isolated heat, but no longer showed the previous fire scars. At the time, the fire was active to the west of Los Alamos and so nothing to the north was included.

A later map of Wednesday added a third day’s spread and showed the boundaries of Santa Clara pueblo lands for the first time.

The map for Thursday when the fire spread north did show the footprint of the Cerro Grande fire, but gave no place names. Instead of the daily growth, it showed only the perimeter of the fire. The only way you could tell the general location of the pueblo was with the county line.

On Friday the map again showed only the fire perimeter, but this time it included the spatial organization of the fire fighters. The legend didn’t explain all the symbols used, but Santa Clara appeared to be divided between two groups by the county line.

On Sunday, the map returned to its original format, showing the growth by day with a clear indication of what was destroyed when it entered Santa Clara land. It’s useful to finally have information I can use to know what it is I’m seeing and smelling, but it appeared two days after it was needed.



Those changes in format, those omissions or delays in information suggest some blunder was made in predicting the behavior of the fire, and that ever since men have been denying an error that could easily have been made in allocating scarce resources to fight a fire growing in all directions.

At 8:30 Thursday morning the Incident Information System reported

“Firefighters are monitoring long-range spotting, which have been seen as far north as the Santa Clara Pueblo. Firefighters will also be dealing with unfavorable winds which may result in extreme fire behavior and continue to push the fire to the north. Firefighters will continue scouting for potential fire line and burnout opportunities to prevent the fire from spreading.”

At the same the local Wordpress blog said “As of Thursday morning, fire crews reported the northern finger of the blaze is extending northward toward the Santa Clara Pueblo.”

Later that same day the Santa Clara suggested that that “long-rage spotting” or “northern finger” had “exploded across the western third of the reservation” producing the smoke visible from my back porch.

That night, the fire fighters described that as short runs with “spotting less than 1 mile occurred on the north head of fire” and then said it had crossed “moved northeast past NM Hwy 144 and spread into parts of the Cerro Grande burn area.” 144 in fact is a forest road west of Los Alamos and may represent the western side of the fire’s movements, but it does not appear on the maps they publish or on many other state maps.

Once the Santa Clara issued their press release, they have not been mentioned in the daily reports, except by obscure references to forest road 144 and the Cerro Grande scar.



Indeed, once the pueblo said they had “attended briefings and given recommendations and data to the Incident Command” and “repeatedly asked that adequate resources be devoted to the north end of the fire” another cultural game began: the one that says how dare a minority claim to be a victim.

Right after they issued their press release, the lab issued one in which the lab director discussed all the real victims of the fire, those who worked for the lab and lost their homes. They still had their lives and their way of life, but the loss of a tangible private asset made them the greater victims. He even listed the communities involved. In order they were: “Cochiti, the Jemez mountains, Santa Clara and San Ildefonso Pueblos and communities to the North.”

Then, like Princess Di, the lab director stopped in at “the Santa Claran Event Center in Española and the Cities of Gold Casino in Pojoaque” to personally meet with refugees from Los Alamos. He noted “one of the messages I heard loud and clear from evacuees was that many of them are isolated from information sources and they do not have a good understanding of what is happening at the Laboratory.”

The forest service also held community meetings in Jemez Springs, Cochiti Pueblo and at Santa Clara. They said local residents “received updated information on the fire and had their questions answered.”

On Friday they also began adding that “archeologists work with our dozers, graders and hand crews to minimize damage to sensitive areas.” They now also report “All firefighting crews receive a daily briefing on sensitive historical and cultural sites within the fire area.”

However, when they list the sites that are closed they don’t mention Puye Cliffs. It was damaged by the Cerro Grande fire and only reopened in May of 2009. The nearby recreation area is still closed. When I drove by Saturday there was check point indicating only authorized people could go beyond the gas station.

I suspect the basic problem, apart from not having enough resources, managers who are under extreme political pressure from a narcissistic lab, and directives that use economic criteria to define priorities, is that many do not understand the difference between the forest as a recreational alternative to urban life and its existence as an extension of an agricultural life rooted in a migratory past.

Economic impacts are easy to define. Los Alamos has more than 12,000 people and the lab employs many more from places like the Española valley. The Pueblo is less than 1,000. Measuring the comparative social and psychological impacts is impossible.

The real shortage hasn’t simply been firefighters, money, or time to respond. The real problem is there’s been no rain, was almost no snow, and the storms we’ve had so far have been better at starting new fires and taking out power than quenching flames.



Notes: Daily postings at nmfireinfo.wordpress.com and its link to the Incident Information System. Information is updated often, even in an existing report, and old postings are discarded.

Los Alamos National Laboratory. “”LANL Director Expresses Concern for Communities Across the Region,” 30 June 2011 press release.

____. “LANL Director Visits Los Alamos Evacuees,” 1 July 2011 press release.

Santa Clara Pueblo. “”Las Conchas Fire Burns More Than 6,000 acres of Santa Clara Pueblo Land,” 30 June 2011 press release.

Pictures Taken the Day after an Unrecorded Event
1. Looking towards Los Alamos, 1 July 2011 about 7:03pm.

2. Driving into the afternoon void on highway 84/285 somewhere between Tesuque and Camel Rock, 1 July 2011 about 6:03pm.

3. The air turned brown from smoke coming down from Los Alamos as the road entered Pojoque; taken at La Puebla exit, 1 July 2011 about 6:17pm.

4. Looking west towards Santa Clara lands, 1 July 2011 about 7:36pm.

5. Looking north towards Española, 1 July 2011 about 7:37pm.

6. Sun coming in the car window between Tesuque and Camel Rock, 1 July 2011 about 6:03pm.

Fire Breaks Loose

Fire is a wily beast.

Anyone who dismisses that as too anthropomorphic risks being blinded to the dynamics of wind and flame by his or her material view of the universe.

On Sunday the Las Conchas fire had exploded in the Bandelier National Monument. It quickly spread to 60,740 acres, then seemed to slow down. In the next three days it grew another 36,982 acres to 92,722 acres, a sixth the pace.

To the south where it had threatened Cochiti it encountered lighter fuels that slaked its appetite. To the north it was hedged by the grassy remains of the Cerro Grande fire of 2000. It seemed content going west.

At noon on Thursday, June 30, the Los Alamos fire chief said “We’re starting to turn the corner on this fire.” The fire service’s information officer had already assured people that “fire is a science,” that a fire behaviorist could study the way a fire behaves and predict what it would do. There were even hopes it would rain.

Driving home the sky was dark and stormy. The winds were picking up. When I turned into my valley, I left the clouds behind, but I could see a rainbow to the east from whence I’d just come.



To the west there was strong plume of pink smoke rising from the Jemez.

While we were being lulled by pronouncements that the fire was held at bay at the borders of the lab, it had been inching north unheralded. When you looked at the infrared map from that morning, you could see it had entered Santa Clara land where it was already even with the scar’s northern tip.

Just as it moved north of the limiting old fire bed, the winds picked up.

While I was at work, the pueblo governor had declared a state of emergency. The fire had burned 6,000 acres in the watershed, all the land in the headwaters of the Santa Clara creek that feeds their irrigation system.



The winds continued to rise. The sun turned red. The pink plume turned dark grey, The smoke rising above turned orange in the reflection of the sun.

Then the sky grew dark. The lights of the gas station at the base of the road that leads to Puye cliffs and Santa Clara canyon came on to the right of my neighbor’s Siberian elm.

The winds were howling about the house. Dots of orange appeared above a ridge. Then the dots merged into a broad U-shaped line with a blur of red to the north where I could see shadows of bare tree trunks.



When I woke at midnight, the winds had stopped. The stars were out. The big dipper hung off the west end of the porch. Los Alamos was a white line, either from the fire or lights in town. The Santa Clara fire was a long static red line, no longer pulsing.

When I woke again at 5:45, the dew had fallen. The mountains were gone. There were no signs of smoke or fire. A half hour later, the lights of the gas station are out. The sandstone cliffs were etched in the sun. Those who had slept through the night woke reassured man could master the universe.

Notes:
Baca, Joe. Las Conchas Fire Burns More Than 6,000 acres of Santa Clara Pueblo Land,” 30 June 2011 press release.

Pitassi, Brad. United States National Forest Service, Southwest Area Type I Incident Management Team information officer. Quoted by Staci Matlock, “Los Alamos Residents Flee Growing Las Conchas Fire,” Santa Fe’s The New Mexican, 27 June 2011.

Tucker, Doug, Los Alamos fire chief. Quoted by Carol A. Clark, “Fire Battle Begins to Turn Corner,” Los Alamos Monitor, 30 June 2011.

United States National Forest Service. “Las Conchas Progression” map, 30 June 2011.

Picture 1. Smoke from the Santa Clara fire, 30 June 2011 about 7:56pm; just to the right of the Siberian elm in the center is the gas station at the base of the road to Puye cliffs.

Picture 2: Rainbow to the east, 30 June 2011 about 6:24pm.

Picture 3: Smoke from the Santa Clara fire, 30 June 2011 about 6:25pm, where the rainbow as shining to the east.

Picture 4: Santa Clara fire, 30 June 2011 about 9:19pm; the red blur is above the gas station. With the high winds and slow shutter speed, it was impossible to get a picture that doesn’t have some camera movement.
system.

When Fire Becomes Routine

Wednesday, June 29, the fire had settled into a routine. The early mornings were hazy, the afternoons were stormy, the sunsets were unusual, the nights were clear enough to see the big dipper from my back porch.

The fire was measured out in daily press briefings, infrared maps of its extent and NASA photographs of its smoke. County officials jostled for their minute of fame. The lab wanted to hunker down, but the new media kept it alert.

Since the last fire, every person who comes on site has a cell phone with a camera and the ability to send instant impressions to friends. I’m sure in the more secure areas there are still many restrictions about the use of such devices, but in other areas where the fire threatened people were probably unencumbered.

I suspect the people in the area didn’t just include the essential LANL (or LANS as its now called) personnel, but the local backhoe drivers and others hired by the lab or county to dig all those defenses they’re bragging about. Everyone has a cell phone, everyone has an opinion.



Paranoia about the lab resurfaced. The Santa Fe newspaper reported the fire “was burning three miles from Area G, where barrels of radioactive waste are stored.” Those became corroding barrels by the time I talked to deliveryman in the city yesterday afternoon.

Others believed the fire was on lab grounds, despite the disclaimers.

The lab responded with a press release describing its efforts to monitor the air. No one, or not many anyway, feared the current nuclear inventory. People have always been much more concerned about what was dumped in the late 1940's and early 1950's before there were procedures to follow, or avoid.

They reported their preliminary samples “show no radioactive materials from Laboratory operations or legacy waste in smoke from the Las Conchas fire.”

Unfortunately, many will remain unconvinced. They’ve learned from things like the beryllium exposure that information that carries the potential for high liabilities is not made public.

Who believes they would tell us about anything less than a serious release? Who thinks it matters that the radioactive profile of the lab’s smoke is not different than that in the area, since most of the smoke is from the same source?

But then, most of us know this and recognize it as the price we pay for the pleasures of living in this part of the country. If it comes it will be horrendous. Otherwise, as they say, less serious than smoking cigarettes, hard drinking or doing drugs.

It’s just another hobby horse, another familiar response to crisis, trotted out with all the others.



Reporters unable to actually report on the fire fell back on the routine. They quoted the fire chief who saw the flames Sunday and thought “Oh my god, here we go again.” They talked to people in Los Alamos who were throwing out flammable materials or watering the lawn, as if either would stop a fire if it reached the town. But familiar activities are soothing.

Another reporter visited an evacuation center in Española to find an elderly woman who said “the fire was an act of God.” Her comments were posted on You Tube with the implication that this was God’s punishment.

No one checked. Her husband, Casey, is a retired lab technician who worked with the Boy Scouts for years on environmental projects. Every year he walks to Chimayó as an act of penance.

If they wanted to find panic instead of stoicism, they could have talked to my boss’s mother who left Cochiti after a spot fire burned a few miles from her house Sunday night.

If they wanted frustration, they could have talked to the Santa Clara who felt the dangers to their lands weren’t being taken seriously.

But those interviews would have broken the routines the reporters used to lull themselves into believing they are doing their jobs.

When a fire becomes routine, the danger is people’s routines are revived to shield them from the simmering crisis.

Notes:
Los Alamos National Laboratory. “No Wildfire on Laboratory Property; Active Air Monitoring Underway,” npsnmfireinfo website, 29 June 2011.

Los Angeles Times. “Miracle Of The Mud,” 16 April 1995, on Casey Stevens.

Stevens, Virginia. Quoted by KOB TV, “Los Alamos Evacuee: Fire act of God,” 28 June 2011.

Tucker, Doug. Quoted by Staci Matlock, “Los Alamos Residents Flee Growing Las Conchas Fire,” The New Mexican, 27 June 2011.

Top picture: Locust trees blowing in the wind to the east, June 29 about 8:18pm.

Middle picture: Black Mesa in front of an invisible Los Alamos, June 29 about 8:58am.

Bottom picture: Black Mesa with the trail of smoke that leads back to the fire, June 29 about 8:17pm.

Dislocations

By Tuesday, June 28, the fire had ceased to exist as a living presence. It was known only by its spoor.

The smoke woke me around 3:30 in the morning. It apparently collects under the southwest facing back porch roof, then gets trapped by the fence to the southeast. As I tried to get back to sleep without an air conditioner to purify the air, I was wondering, should I go sit in the car with the air on, should I try to find a motel room, is there an evacuation site still open?

When I woke again, the mountains to the west were lost in a haze, but it was clear to the east.

Los Alamos was still a dim presence when I left for work around 9:30. I thought I could just see a white line divided into two parts where I assumed new smoke was rising.



In Santa Fe, the fire was known only by its refugees, the ones who had to leave Los Alamos yesterday. The man who delivered the bottled water was staying in Truches where the morning was cold.

At the bank the teller who’s a volunteer fireman wasn’t there. His place was taken by someone from the Los Alamos branch. Everyone was friendly, but it took three to figure out where the check orders were kept for pick-up.

The drive home was more dramatic than yesterday. Another storm was coming, but the grey was replaced by an overall wash of brown. Mountains and lower geographic features were blurs. Over that was a layer of gray that was shaped like a storm, but could be more smoke. To the west, there was a rosy hue which could be either the fire or the sun.



Everything was a shadow of itself.

The storm never came. The smell of smoke increased. The sun couldn’t break through the haze of pastel chalk.

I made up the bed in the spare bedroom but still woke at 11:45, my nose too dry to sleep. The sky was clear, the stars were visible as were the lights of the Santa Clara gas station across the river.

Still everything was dislocated. The mesa was a blur, the warning lights of Los Alamos invisible. Sleep only came when my nose cleared.

Top picture: The invisible Los Alamos behind the Black Mesa, June 28 about 7:43pm.

Middle picture the invisible Los Alamos behind a leg of the Black Mesa with a hint of smoke to the east (left), June 28 about 9:26am.

Bottom picture: The Black Mesa in front of invisible mountains, June 28 about 6:28pm.

The Fire Loses Reality

Monday, June 27, I lost complete touch with the fire as it disappeared behind a fog of smoke and a dearth of information.

It wasn’t just the closing of the lab and the evacuation of Los Alamos that threw me back to the emotions of the Cerro Grande fire. It was also the combination of bureaucratic timidity and media incompetence that meant no information.

Last time, Washington politicians arrived. Whenever there was a press conference, the locals came out for the pictures, then scurried after the retreating bigger wigs. They had no time for their constituents, only for their own networking opportunities.

The major networks sent crews. The local reporters, hoping to be the next Dan Rather, hung around them, hoping for a bit of notice that could translate into a contract that might mean a better job. They were too intent on currying favor to actually cultivate sources who might tell them about the fire.

The local reporters who actually tried to cover the story around the barriers set by the lab were suspended. One had the temerity of using his press pass to bring family members into the evacuated town to record their responses to seeing their destroyed home. This was considered an abuse of power to favor cronies.

There was one, it may have been the same, who reported more of the rumors that were swirling outside the sterile press releases. That voice too disappeared.

Now the forest service blog has been usurped. It carries all the official press releases and describes the strategies (not the actions) of the fire fighting managers. The fire is reduced to a daily map showing its extent. It no longer is described as active or inactive, running or crowning or whatever else we’ve learned fires do.

And people I talk to complain. They don’t know what’s going on. They can’t connect the geographic references used by the media with the landmarks they know. The press is doing nothing but repeating abstracts of press releases.

And, if you live in Santa Fe, instead of down in the valley, you can’t see anything either. All you know if your throat is sore, your eyes gummy. There’s a layer of ash and charred pine needles in the yard. The sun is red, the mountains are gone. But nothing can be learned.

I grew so restive that afternoon I fled the office at 2:30 and headed north.

The sky are grey, visibility limited. You could see nothing of the fire. It felt like I was rushing to get home before a snow storm closed the road. When I made the turn west towards my house and the fire, suddenly the sky are bluer, the distance clearer.

Topography is everything here. Running parallel to the road north of Pojoaque is a geologic formation, a monocline, that’s barely visible from the road and carries a name as obscure as the many others used on maps that have been puzzling people trying to learn where the fire it.

Unnamed and unseen by most, it’s still enough to channel the weather, to keep rain away from the dry area to the east. For a storm indeed was passing through.

Around 4:40 I began to feel a few sprinkles, could see lightening to the west of the Black Mesa. Then the winds resumed and I could smell the smoke. Within twenty minutes the sounds of thunder had moved north, there was only water pocked sand in the drive.



By 6:15 the smoke was creeping out of Los Alamos, a heavy brown presence. Beneath, the grass turned dark gold. To the north, the sun turned red. The air was still.



The smoke continued to move to form an arch over my head that would turn into a skull cap when the light faded.

The sun sank behind the Jemez turning the sky red with its own reflection, more brilliant than the fire.

Then darkness. South towards Los Alamos there seemed to a narrow white line. It seemed to pulse like the northern lights, but that could have been an affect created by smoke distorting my view.

I could no longer tell mirages from reflections from reality.

Top picture: Sun setting in the Jemez, June 27 about 8:15pm.

Middle picture: Smoke to the east, June 27 about 6:55pm.

Bottom picture: The grass to the east under the cap of smoke, June 27 about 7:48pm.

The Clarity of Fire

Sunday, June 26, I walked southwest into an arroyo between my house and the Black Mesa. The heat had built up so much in the past week, when the thermometer read 93 at 6pm, that the heat from the clay and sand soil burned through my shoes. For the first time it was uncomfortable to walk on what had become shallow dunes.

I also walked a quarter mile down the road to the northeast where the Pacheco Canyon fire was visible. There’s a break in the ridges of clay and gravel, and it looks like a flood might once have broken through. The area where I was standing is a flat, grassy prickly pear cactus field that edges another arroyo.

It was a normal fire morning.

The winds increased about noon. A few weeks ago I bought a portable wind gauge to learn exactly how severe they were when the locust and tamarix began to twist. Whatever it was designed for, it doesn’t work in New Mexico. I have no idea how severe they were, only that they’ve been much worse this month.

Around two I took a nap. When I awoke, the light coming through the east window of my bedroom had changed. The grass, usually brown, was silver.



I grabbed my camera to try to photograph the effects of light. When I couldn’t see enough grass from my back porch, I started to walk around the house.

That’s when I saw the huge mushroom cloud behind the Black Mesa. It looked like everyone’s worst fears of what could come from Los Alamos.

The New Mexico fire website, nmfireinfo.wordpress.com, said a fire had broken out behind the lab in the Bandelier National Forest. It didn’t have to tell me it was the most powerful fire we’ve seen - and in the 20 years I’ve lived here, they have been three large fires around Bandelier: the Dome Fire of 1996, the Cerro Grande fire of 2000, and this one. There was also one, the La Mesa, in 1977.

I talked to someone yesterday who lives in Los Alamos. He said he when we went into the local hardware store Sunday he saw the first wisps of smoke. When he came out, about 15 minutes later, the fire had grown huge.

At the time officials said the fire was 3,000 acres. When I went to bed they said 6,000 to 9,000 acres. It took the Pacheco Canyon fire a week to reach that size.

When I looked the next morning, they said it was 43,000 acres, much of it to the south and east of the hot spots near Las Conchas. It had taken the Cerro Grande fire two weeks to cover that much land.

One difference was weather. The Cerro Grande fire resulted from a controlled burn begun on May 4, in the spring of a relatively normal year, when the winds are high. This is early summer in the year of a severe drought when high winds have persisted longer than usual.

The other difference was that this fire was more visible than the Cerro Grande. The plume grew, fading to grey in the east where it mixed with whatever smoke was rising from Pacheco Canyon. To the west the edge was gilded by the sun. To the north, the sky was still clear.

When the sun went down, spots of orange became visible. They sometimes merged into a line, sometimes disappeared. Eventually the red warning lights around Los Alamos appeared below and in front of the ridge line of fire.

From where I stood on my back porch I didn’t know if I was actually seeing the fire, or just its reflection in the clouds.


On the one hand there was a sense of great clarity. For much of the day, the smoke had some form. In the night, it was reduced to a thin line of orange. Everything was visible, even if it was only effects of light and smoke I was seeing.

On the other hand there was a feeling no one yet knows what’s going on - that clarity will come in the morning after they’ve made their reconnaissance flights. Then the freefall will be stabilized.

But for now, any human in the area knew there was a fire and had a fairly good idea where it was. The rest was mystery.

Top picture: Las Conchas fire over the Black Mesa, June 26, around 4:46pm.

Middle picture: View to the east, June 26, around 4:43pm.

Bottom picture: Las Conchas fire through the lilacs, June 26, around 8:09pm.