Los Alamos Lab to host public forum on wildfire preparedness

Wildfire season is forcing Los Alamos National Laboratory to spell out how it would protect the Pajarito Plateau if flames move through the canyons around the site. The public forum, hosted by N3B Los Alamos with EM-LA and LANL, is scheduled for June 3 from 5 to 7 p.m. Mountain time, in person at 10 Cities of Gold Rd. #A in Santa Fe, Pojoaque, and online through Microsoft Teams. The meeting is open to the community and will move from presentations into a question-and-answer session, giving residents a direct chance to challenge officials on evacuation, smoke and infrastructure risks.

LANL’s wildfire materials show a layered defense that is already in place. The Lab says its Wildland Fire team removes about 3,000 tons of fuels, including timber and brush, each year across the site. It says evacuation routes have been cleared, fire roads and fire breaks are inspected and maintained, and firefighting assets are staged to support the Los Alamos Fire Department if needed. Those assets include a U.S. Forest Service helicopter kept on site, a 20,000-gallon water dip tank, a Laboratory water tanker and heavy equipment for building fire lines. LANL also says it has 68 air monitoring sites and that about 1,200 essential staff would remain on site during an evacuation to safeguard facilities, utilities and other assets.

The broader fire picture around Los Alamos is still uneasy. DOE wildfire-mitigation materials describe five wildfire buffer zones totaling about 12,000 acres, but DOE’s 2019 supplemental environmental assessment said conditions had changed since 2000 because of longer fire seasons, vegetation changes and climate change. LANL says it responded to the 2011 Las Conchas Fire by putting more acreage under asphalt to reduce fire vulnerability, and its mitigation work also includes coordination with archaeologists and biologists so vegetation management does not damage ancestral cultural sites or nesting birds. For residents, the key issue is not whether work is being done, but whether that work is keeping pace with the terrain, the fuels and the canyon corridors that can carry fire fast.

The forum will also put waste storage and smoke protection under the same microscope. LANL says about 2,600 steel containers of transuranic waste are stored above ground in seven fire-resistant domes at Technical Area 54, and about 1,000 more steel containers are at Technical Area 55. Those details matter because wildfire concerns in Los Alamos are never just about trees and embers; they also involve evacuation timing, air quality and the security of critical infrastructure. The county and Los Alamos Fire Department have been pushing a wildfire-prevention campaign since March 10, using the Ready, Set, Go! action plan, a reminder that the June 3 forum is part of a wider community effort to prepare before the next fire threatens the mesas and canyons.