A Bittersweet Homecoming for Los Alamos Evacuees

The thousands of people streaming back into fire-devastated Los Alamos on Tuesday found smoke still lingering in the air and most stores closed or without such staples as meat and vegetables.

It was a city entirely different from the one they had left just six days before, when they fled ahead of a wall of flames that raced up the sides of canyons and left 405 families homeless.

The Los Alamos nuclear weapon laboratory remained closed, and pockets of the town remained without gas or electricity.

“Our neighborhood burned down. What happens now? Are people going to leave? Are they going to stick around and rebuild?” wondered Jerry Kindsfather, who with his brother Gary operates Ed’s Food Market, a small grocery store on the edge of one of the city’s hardest-hit sections. People filed in Tuesday to stock up on eggs, milk and bread.

Twenty percent of Los Alamos, where the homes burned, was still off-limits Tuesday, and the devastation there appeared overwhelming. Entire neighborhoods were burned by a fire that left the few trees still standing looking like blackened toothpicks. Smoke from the fire, now burning a safe distance away, still filled the canyons.

The Los Alamos High School prom, sports banquet and Advanced Placement exams have been postponed. One girl plans to cancel her graduation party.

“I would feel bad to give somebody an invitation and be like, ‘Too bad your house burned down, but we’re having a party,’ ” says Noelle Stillman, an 18-year-old headed to the University of Arizona this fall on a soccer scholarship.

While high school seniors across the country have been picking out prom dresses and cramming in quality time with their best friends, members of Los Alamos’ Class of 2000 have been anxiously watching TV news in the homes of out-of-town relatives and friends.

Principal Lynne Saccaro said Tuesday that the school would reopen on Monday, with about 20 counselors present. The students have been off since May 8.

Saccaro did not know how many students lost their homes in the fire.

“The kids need to see each other,” a choked-up Saccaro said. “They need to know everyone is OK.”

Graduation will go on as planned on June 3, she said, mainly because many out-of-town relatives already have booked their trips. Saccaro said no decision had been made on whether the students will take final exams.

There have been a couple of bright spots amid the devastation. At state track and field championships last weekend, Los Alamos senior Magdalena Sandoval won the 3,200-meter and 1,600-meter races, and teammate Christina Gonzales won the triple jump.

The 46,000-acre fire, 35% contained, was moving northeast, away from Los Alamos and toward unburned forest land Tuesday, said David Seesholtz, a fire information spokesman.

It started outside town on National Park Service land on May 4, at Bandelier National Monument, when a controlled burn meant to clear away dry brush and prevent future wildfires was pushed out of control by high winds.

At the peak of the danger, all 11,000 residents of Los Alamos, and 14,000 people from surrounding communities were ordered out of their homes.

About 75% of Los Alamos had its electricity back on Tuesday, said Chris Ortega, utilities manager for Los Alamos County. He said it would be at least another day before power was restored everywhere.

Gas is also available to about 75% of the town, but it won’t be turned on for individual homes until people return and request it. Utility workers were circling neighborhoods Tuesday, volunteering to turn on the gas wherever they found someone home, Ortega said.

Some of the 2,000 people who were still not allowed to return home were briefly escorted by the National Guard into the devastated area to retrieve belongings.

At Ed’s Food Market, Kindsfather returned to find refrigerators filled with spoiled eggs and melted ice cream that had oozed out of containers and formed a colorful sludge on the shelves. He also had to dump $20,000 worth of frozen food.