Las Conchas Wildfire – Day 6
LANL has teamed up with a local New Mexico small business, Transparent Sky LLC, to use a battlefield surveillance system that allows evacuees the ability to check on their property in near real-time.
Dr Masters writes about this fire, and the general situation in the Southwest from a climate perspective.
Progress is being made, but it is going to be a slow process because of terrain and conditions.
Information from the current Las Conchas Wildfire InciWeb Page
- Date Started: 6/26/2011
- Location: Jemez Ranger District, Santa Fe National Forest; approximately 12 miles southwest of Los Alamos off NM 4 at mile marker 35, New Mexico
- Cause: Unknown – under investigation
- Size: 113,734 acres [178 miles² 460 km²] based on infrared data
- Percent Contained: 6%
- Injuries to Date: 0
- Residences: 450 threatened; 63 destroyed; 3 damaged
- Commercial Property: 55 threatened; 5 destroyed; 3 damaged
- Outbuildings: 140 threatened; 32 destroyed
- Number of Personnel: Approximately 1,632 including 41 hand crews
- Equipment: 4 dozers, 67 engines, 24 watertenders
- Aircraft: 11 helicopters
- Incident Commander: Dan Oltrogge, Area Command Team 1
Although fire lines in the Los Alamos area are currently holding, these lines are not fully contained. In many areas today’s fire behavior was generally a backing fire, spreading the fire slowly down slopes and into canyons. Where downed logs are burning, heat and smoke are prevalent. As the smoke column developed, some locations along the fire perimeter experienced more active fire behavior.
Firefighters are facing many challenges including steep terrain, multiple abandoned underground mining operations, and threats of flash flooding. In many places the fire is burning in older fire scars including the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire which has the added challenge of eroded slopes with many downed logs. Both live and dead vegetation are at historically dry levels.
Firefighting activities focus on protecting communities, watersheds, and other important features. Several communities around the fire include Los Alamos, White Rock, Recheulos, Town of Cochiti Lake, Cochiti Pueblo, Jemez Pueblo, and Vallecitos de Indios Subdivision. Other concerns include numerous communication sites, the New Mexico natural gas pipeline, Cerro Pelado Lookout, extensive cultural and archeological sites, watersheds and riparian areas.
Part of yesterday’s smoke was generated by burn-out operations where fire was used to reinforce containment lines by creating wider fire lines. Burnout operations continued on the north end of the fire, in the Pajarito Ski area, in the east portion of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, Smoke is also coming from fuels burning within the interior of the fire.
Fire spread north onto Mesa de la Gallina, and southwest in Bland and Cochiti Canyons. The fire was actively backing down Bearhead Peak, with torching and flame lengths exceeding 100 feet. The fire was also moving south into Peralta Canyon, and it moved over a half mile today east of the Cerro Pelado Lookout. Helicopters successfully cooled many areas on the Santa Clara Pueblo lands. Crews are securing lines north of Highway 4 between Bandelier National Monument and Los Alamos, and are constructing lines along the southeast flank in Bandelier National Monument.
Firefighters have also been removing downed logs to improve access to homes and buildings in Sandoval County, and improving fuel conditions around structures in the Vallecitos de Los Indios and Cochiti Lake subdivisions.
[For the latest information click on the Fire symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Fires” for all of the posts related to wildfires on this site.]
