Los Alamos escaped some of the worst possibilities in the recent wildfire—the largest ever in New Mexico—which burned more than 123,000 acres. No radioactive material was released, as some initially feared, during the Los Conchas fire, which is believed to have started when trees fell onto power lines. People evacuated from their homes have returned, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory is expected to reopen this week.
Rains helped bring the fire under control late last week, but the area is now under threat from further seasonal rains, which could cause flash flooding in areas that have lost trees and groundcover. Crews are clearing streambeds of debris to prevent waters from backing up and are placing sandbags around buildings believed to be at risk.
This isn’t the first time the area has been threatened by wildfires; in May 2000, a prescribed fire at the nearby Bandelier National Monument got out of control, ultimately burning more than 47,000 acres. That fire, too, spread onto laboratory grounds, but then, as with this recent fire, no radioactive material was released. This article, written for Erosion Control by a member of the lab’s Water Quality and Hydrology Group for our November/December 2000 issue, describes the Cerro Grande fire and its aftereffects, including emergency sediment control efforts by the US Army Corps of Engineers and others.
Just months earlier, the same author wrote this article for our April 2000 issue describing the laboratory’s efforts to assess the erosion potential of various sites, including a scoring system to identify high-priority sites and the BMPs to mitigate the risks.