Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory Update: TA 16 on Fire

Just in the last hour or so the Concha fire has entered the LANL laboratory grounds: it looks like TA 16 and TA 28 are on fire as we speak, whereas TA 47, TA 11, TA 13, TA 08 and TA 09 are threatened with what looks like a very hot and wild fire. Because this area is kind of remote, it has been used for high explosive experiments and there are lots of potentially contaminated buildings and areas there. If I remember correctly some of the long term burning bunkers with unknown toxic legacy contents in 2000 were also in this general area and there may be more. Explosives storage, tritium facilities, x-ray equipment, experimental explosives, they are all located in this area and it is going up in flames as we speak. From here the fire has an open road towards the plutonium and administration facilities which presumably will be protected one way or another --but who knows? The laboratory is totally unwieldy and many people have become depressed by the lack of meaningful work and hence there are screw-ups abound. This is really terrible news: code purple I would say --very close to code black. I will let you know.

Fires in Los Alamos: Danger Assessment: Code Red

like the pueblo people say..... Avanyu the water snake can turn into the fire snake

Los Alamos: where-ever you look there are accidents waiting to happen, one way or another --but the fires are really one of the worst immediate threats.

It looks on the Google maps plus wind direction that the Concha fires are making a B-line for the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory buildings. The vinyl tents over area G filled with contaminated drums waiting to be shipped to Wipp and some poorly designed nuclear waste pools are perhaps the worst case scenario. But vegetation is rather sparse up there and it is built next to a swamp water win area (smart -- que no ?). The Avanyu water snake petroglyph just underneath area G will be be blackened.

In other areas of the laboratory there are sprinkler systems to prevent spontaneous combustion of contaminated areas and that would be an easy target for a hot fire. Furthermore I am concerned about burning transfer stations, old bunkers, material storage, failing back up systems, and the town itself. This could be a firestorm consuming a lot of the old wooden (laboratory) buildings, but remember the 2000 fire also took out easily 25 houses, and very little was left of them.

To me this looks a lot worse than the 2000 fire, which was bad enough with underground material storage spaces (with God knows what? in them) burning even 6 weeks after the rest of the fires had long died down. We could have a 2011 sequel here, much more blackened than the first edition. And what about the animals ?

20000 people are fleeing their homes now. Since Santa Fe and this whole region is singularly unprepared, one should consider moving back to where-ever one came from at least for the time being. I know that the Los Alamos fire brigade is unprepared for a calamity like this, and who could blame them. There is wrath in this fire.

If there is a need to make extra bread, due to the influx of Los Alamos into the Santa fe Area -- let me know (505 920 1277) Also I would like to make people aware of a fire info meeting that Los Alamos Study Group (LASG) will host this tuesday 7-9 pm in room 116 at  St. John's United Methodist Church,1200 Old Pecos Trail

The Railrunner runs Amuck in Santa Fe

Like so many little tourist towns, Santa Fe depends on a combo of mystique and 'special events'. Santa Fe has been hosting the Spanish Market, the Indian Market, the Folk Art Market, and many 'festivals, such as the Santa Fe Film festival, the Japan Festival, Greek Festival, Ethnic Arts, etc. --these are all large national and international events. To top it off, throughout the year many farmers travel many miles from all over Northern New Mexico to gather for a large regional Farmers Market (with a piggyback art market) attended by thousands of people each week.

 

All these markets have one thing in common: They gravitate towards the weekends: Saturday and Sunday are usually the big days, with lots of traffic and a lack of adequate parking. Everyone knows this.

But what happens here? Somehow the train service to Santa Fe is cut out during the weekend. Yes, you are reading it right: despite gas prices where they are at, despite lack of accessibility, regardless of a lack of parking spaces and regardless of all the 'special events', there will not be any trains coming to Santa Fe on the weekends.

This is not the place to complain about the price-tag for the one track 'railrunner' (440 million) or all the corruption that surrounded its construction (thanks Bill). As a participant in the Santa Fe Farmers-market I already noticed a remarkable drop off in business in this venue. Whereas some weeks ago one could always count on an influx of people from Albuquerque arriving at the SF train station at 11 o'clock, ready to buy --they are not there any longer. Result is that all these markets, and Santa Fe itself will suffer.

The railrunner train service is a community resource. We paid for it. If it is suffering somehow, from lack of sufficient revenue to keep it running --we need to think about that. Trains could have more prominence in our area with much better service (it takes almost 2 hours to get to Albuquerque). Furthermore it could be marketed much better and be an integral part to all the special events. But to dismantle it for the weekends is another example of short sighted policy in a time of climate crisis. Not to hear a peep squeak  from any politician or the mayor here, is yet another indication that the local 'body politico' is totally out of touch with the economic and ecological realities of this area. Sooner or later the price tag will come due: a lost desert town, with fires all around, and poverty abound.