FIRE FORCES LOS ALAMOS EVACUATION

Los Alamos Residents Told to Pack and Leave http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/alamos000510.html

May 10 — The entire town of Los Alamos, N.M., was told to evacuate this afternoon as a 4,000-acre blaze closed in, fueled by strong winds and dry brush and trees.

Fire department spokesman Jim Paxon said there was time for a calm, orderly evacuation of the town’s 11,500 residents. He said police, sheriff’s and fire department officials were going door-to-door urging people to pack up and get out as quickly as possible.

Residents were told to evacuate Los Alamos, N.M., as the Cerro Grande fire moved closer. (ABCNEWS.com/Magellan Geographix)

This morning, calmer winds and higher humidity had helped 800 crewmen bring some 15 percent of the Cerro Grande fire in Los Alamos under control.

But gusts picked up, sending the blaze racing across the dry ponderosa pines, piñon and juniper trees in the area. The area is six inches below normal rainfall for the year.

“The fire blew up, basically,” Paxon said.

“In fighting a fire like this, you don’t get in front of it,” he said. “You get on the sides and work the flanks and chase it. We try to work both flanks and pinch it off.”

Firefighters from Arizona joined New Mexico firefighters in battling the blaze.

“We’ve been busy,” said firefighter Mark Adams of the Blue Ridge Hotshots, based near Flagstaff, Ariz. “We started March 29, and we’ve been to about seven big fires already.

Roughly half of the force fighting the blaze is made up of Native American crews from reservations and pueblos in New Mexico and Arizona, said Willie Begay, with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Worse Conditions on the Way Conditions were expected to worsen today and grow particularly bad by Thursday at Los Alamos, where the National Weather Service forecast wind gusts of 50 mph.

Firefighters have quickly extinguished any spot fires that have popped up on property housing the Los Alamos nuclear weapons labratory, lab spokesman Jim Danneskiold said today. He said the property around the lab closest to the fire was cleared of underbrush after a 1996 blaze.

“The fire is miles from any buildings containing any nuclear materials and those buildings are rated to survive severe fires, 747 crashes, those kinds of things. They’re bunkers, basically,” he said.

Fire Trouble Farther South High wind also kicked up today near the southern resort town of Ruidoso, N.M., where a blaze started by a campfire had burned more than 5,700 acres. Evacuee Anthony Scruggs, 52, said he feared for his home in the Homestead subdivision.

“It’s probably in one of the worst areas,” he said. “It seems to be the focal point of the fire, and I know they’re doing all they can, but they can’t control Mother Nature.”

As he spoke, air tankers carrying pink fire retardant and helicopters dangling huge buckets of water roared overhead. A helicopter filled its bucket in a lake at the 12th hole of the Kokopelli Country Club golf course, where Scruggs and three companions were playing a round Tuesday. Scruggs said playing golf was better than sitting in a hotel room or at roadside, since he wasn’t allowed back home.

“There’s nothing I can do. It’s in the hands of God and the firefighters,” he said.

The Associated Press and ABC affiliate KOAT in Albuquerque, N.M., contributed to this report.