Los Alamos Resident Tells of Fiery Ordeal

Tony Tomei heard the explosion the same time the firefighters did, from somewhere up the canyon away from the flames that were threatening his neighborhood.

The firefighters raced off in their trucks to deal with whatever had blown up. Tomei stayed.

Four days later, he was still there.

“I just got caught up in it,” said Tomei, an engineer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

For the next 12 hours, Tomei struggled alone against the encroaching flames, using hoses, sprinklers and shovels to keep the fire at bay.

“It was like looking a fiery monster in the eye,” Tomei said Saturday. “One time I was in the canyon hanging on to a tree and the fire was roaring up. I was fighting it with the hose. Then 40 to 50 mph winds blew the fire up right at me.

“I fell in the needles and the dirt, and the flames flew right over the top of me, and I thought it might be over.”

In the end, when the winds shifted and the fires moved elsewhere, Tomei’s house and those of his two adjoining neighbors were still standing. The line of charred earth lies 5 feet from one neighbor’s house, 10 yards from his own.

Nearly everything else on his side of the street was destroyed.

Nobody can say for certain how many of Los Alamos’ 11,000 residents spurned the orders to evacuate. Officials earlier estimated fewer than two dozen. Tomei said local police told him there were only six.

But then, the police didn’t know Tomei was still there until he wandered down to a firefighter staging area Friday looking for food, in effect turning himself in.

Tomei stayed behind by accident, he said. When the order to evacuate came Wednesday afternoon, he loaded 100 of his prized accordions into his van and drove with his girlfriend to safety. Then he decided to make one more trip.

“I wanted to come get one more accordion and my cell phone,” Tomei said, standing on his deck overlooking the charred ravine below his house.

When he got to his house, firefighters were in backyards pouring water onto flames climbing up the ridge. Tomei was getting his cell phone and accordion when the explosion came, and the firefighters went.

“I got the hose and thought I’d hold the fire off until they got back,” Tomei said, exhaustion straining his face. It was after midnight, he said, before he realized they probably weren’t coming back.

And by then it was too late for him to leave.

At its peak, Tomei said, the fire seemed to be sparring with him.

“The fire would come up here and I’d beat it back,” he said, pointing behind one neighbor’s house. “Then it would come up on the other way. This went on until the water went off. Then I got shovels and rakes and made a firewall.”

The water was off for about two hours, a disruption that also affected firefighters’ efforts elsewhere in Los Alamos. When the water came back on, Tomei resumed using a hastily hooked up network of hoses, sprinklers and drip lines he draped over roofs and yards to keep them wet. He also hosed himself down, hoping wet clothes would protect him.

And he tore up portions of his deck flooring to put space between the fire and the house itself.

A little after 3 a.m., he said, the wind shifted and the flames went elsewhere. After a few hours, Tomei, exhausted, retrieved a timer from his kitchen, set it for 15 minutes and stretched out on the ground behind his house, afraid of falling asleep as the sounds of fire moved down the canyon.

Early Friday morning he finally allowed himself the luxury of two-hour naps, sleep disturbed by fears that the winds could shift once again.

“I’m just real tired,” Tomei said as smoke from still-raging fires rose in a thick plume on the horizon. “I’m emotionally drained.”