Los Alamos Smoke Clears to a Town Feeling Burned

For a moment nothing appears to have changed. Coming up The Hill, the tidy town of Los Alamos begins to arrive. The slopes of the mesas stretch like knobby fingers into the red canyons. Just over the rise and the heart-stopping transformation is on display. Where were once lush stands of pines are now fields of black stubble, hills riot with the 5 o’clock shadow of wildfires.

Gone are 37 million trees, 43,000 acres of forest. Lost or damaged are 439 homes, countless keepsakes, heirlooms as well as the experiments and life’s research of some of the world’s most prestigious scientists.

Much has changed in the Atomic City since the May 4 Cerro Grande wildfire tore through residential neighborhoods and licked the outer edges of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, created in 1943 to develop an atomic bomb. The lab alone sustained $300 million in fire damage. Total damage figures are still being compiled.

Hard on the heels of the fire came more bad news adding to a year of security scandals at the lab. Last week’s uproar over two missing computer hard drives containing highly classified information came like a body blow to the town, where more than half of the 18,000 residents work at the lab. (The hard drives were recovered Friday.)

Marla Griffith, a disaster services worker at the Red Cross, sighed after listing the year of soul-sapping problems to visit the town.

“It’s like, what’s next? A plague of locusts?” she said. “People are tired.”

In fact, Los Alamos could face another biblical-sized disaster if forecasters’ dire predictions of an early and fierce monsoon are borne out. According to officials, if as little as 2 inches of rain should fall in one hour, there is a high probability that a “100-year flood” would be unleashed, with a wall of water as high as 12 feet roaring unimpeded down the denuded hillsides.

County officials are concerned about bridges washing out and flood waters carrying contaminants as well as burned-log “missiles.” Of special concern is the lab’s Omega West Reactor, which sits in a narrow canyon.

The rains could come in the next two weeks.

All of which bears down on this reeling community, which has yet to start rebuilding its homes or its reputation.

“People are dazed and in shock from all of it, the fires and the lab security and spying stories,” said Mark Bentley, station manager of talk-radio station KRSN-AM, the community’s crucial information link during the blaze, which was touched off during a controlled burn. “There’s a sense of, God, why us?”

The fires and scandals have exposed more than charred ground and lax security. Within the town there have been burbling undercurrents of resentment against “the labbies” with their extravagant educations, outsized paychecks and veil of secrecy. In the past, many in surrounding communities heartily booed Los Alamos High’s visiting athletic teams and generally harbor distaste for the entire town sitting high on the hill.

But some say just as the trees will grow back, making the forest stronger, the emotional bonds that have been forged by neighbors facing down fires with garden hoses to save neighbors’ threatened homes will help open up this once officially “closed city.”

In the foothills’ residential areas now collectively known as the Burn Area, the devastation recalls Manhattan Project Director Robert Oppenheimer’s words after the first atomic testing here: “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Neighborhoods that were once nestled in lush piney hillsides are now block after block of concrete foundations, water heaters and hulks of charred automobiles still in driveways.

The fire’s caprice--and the wind’s gusting changeability--spared one or two homes in the midst, now sitting incongruously unscathed. With no other houses standing nearby, friends and pets evacuated, these “lucky” remaining homeowners survived the fires only to be demoralized by the neighborhood’s lonely aftermath.

At one burned-out home, a spray-painted plywood sign sprouts from the ash: “Phoenix Gardens.”

The Burn Area is crisscrossed with chain-link fences marking off property lines, and in some cases bulldozers have swept out the larger debris, but the scene has remained much as it was last month when the 100 mph inferno raced through here. One reason the debris remains is that the local landfill is at capacity. Another reason: Some debris has been found to contain high levels of asbestos that came from the World War II-era homes.

Still another reason for the inaction is the indecision of the homeowners, who are overwhelmed with red tape from insurance companies and the Federal Emergency Management Agency and haven’t decided about rebuilding. Many won’t.

The county offers weekly meetings to update homeowners about assistance, and officials recently brought in survivors of the 1991 Oakland Hills fire who told them to expect to wait two years before getting into a rebuilt home.

“I am heartsick about it,” said Karen Benelli, whose heart aches even more when she makes out her monthly mortgage check to finance a house that exploded in 3,000-degree heat.

Benelli said she cannot rebuild a home filled with items collected over 20 years of living in Europe. Her children won’t go back to the home site, but Benelli has, and she found an encouraging item she thought she had lost to the fire: a 4-foot ceramic figure, intact, representing hearth and home.

“What do you suppose the symbolism of that is?” she asked.

The some 1,000 people who were rendered homeless scattered “everywhere,” said Judith Schlosser, the county’s housing program manager. “I’ve talked with people who have moved nine times in a month.”

In a town with a 2% vacancy rate before the fire, the housing crunch is acute. About 140 trailers have been brought in by FEMA. At the lab, housing for post-doctoral students is being used by dislocated families. Students are scrounging around town for available couches.

The help has been overwhelming and has come from quarters that have surprised many. Of $2 million in donations collected by the Red Cross, 90% came from in state.

Bentley, who with a partner broadcast for 239 consecutive hours, has many stories of anonymous kindness. One night after the fire the weather turned cold. Firefighters were still working on the mountain. “We put out a call on the radio for 65-70 sweaters and jackets,” he said. “In 20 minutes we had 200 and in an hour we had 1,000. That happened again and again.”

The local hotels donated rooms to firefighters. The hardware store gave plywood to homeowners. The local bank opened on weekends and is offering interest-free loans for six months. The telephone company passed out cell phones.

For the first time anyone can remember, the labbies were dealt a blow that even all their brainpower could not solve. “It was important for the community to know that, after all their years of self-sufficiency, the lab needed help,” said Bill Enloe, CEO of Los Alamos National Bank and a lifelong resident. “There’s never been any common ground. This has made the whole region realize that for all of us to prosper, we need each other.”

The lab’s security problems are less easily dealt with. Skepticism has fostered more than one conspiracy theory that speculates that the government started the fire to get more funding to the lab.

“Nothing they do surprises me,” Benelli said. “I think they know what they’re doing, with the spying and the tapes. I’m a devout American, but I can’t believe what’s going on. The rest of the country looks at us like we’re all spies.”

And more than a few lab workers feel the government has been overzealous in making its case against Wen Ho Lee, the nuclear engineer in jail on allegations he copied thousands of classified computer files onto an unsecured computer network and onto portable tapes. Moreover, they fear the ill will is likely to grow during pretrial hearings coming up in advance of Lee’s November trial.

But Bentley, an optimist, sees the upside of the town’s awful year.

“It had built a bridge,” he said. “The people in Espanola and Santa Fe who disparage Los Alamos and the lab were now taking lab people into their homes. People say it’s going to take five years to rebuild. I’m suggesting that it is going to take 18 months. I know this town. I have money on the table that this town will break all records for rebuilding.”