051400
At 7:00 a.m., it was reported that the Los Alamos fire had spread into
Santa Clara Canyon. Shortly before 8:00 a.m., Roger Life telephoned. He
was home, but would have to go back to Los Alamos to fight the fire
tomorrow. The fire fighters will be working 24 hours on and 24 hours off
for a while. Of course, it took Roger about 20 minutes to tell me that.
At 8:30 a.m., it was reported that the fire had reached the rim of Santa
Clara Canyon, but had not gone down into it yet. The fire was also
headed towards White Rock and Abiquiu. At 9:15 a.m., I was finally able
to connect with my ISP and downloaded the information about which homes
in Los Alamos had been destroyed by the fire.
After printing out the report, I drove to Abiquiu Lake and gave the
report on burned homes in Los Alamos to Denny & Cherryl Mingo. They had
already gotten a copy last night from a friend in Espanola. Mine was
just an update. After evacuating their home in Los Alamos, they were
staying in their large camper and seemed very comfortable. After
visiting for a few hours, I returned home to find a hungry Gato snarling
at my (His) front door. He did let me in, then marched to the
refrigerator and meowed, "FEED ME RIGHT NOW!"
At 2:05 p.m., KOB 770 radio announced that 36,000 acres and 230 homes had
been burned in the Los Alamos fire (Cerro Grande fire). Visitations by
residents have been delayed. The communities of Los Alamos and White
Rock are no longer threatened by the fire. At 3:04 p.m., they announced
that the fire was 5% contained and that Los Alamos was still threatened.
Residents would be bussed in to Los Alamos and allowed to take notes and
pictures only. No one would be allowed off the busses. This was to
begin at 8:00 this morning. (Duh? Nice of them to tell us about that at
3:04 in the afternoon, isn't it?)
At 3:31 p.m., it was reported that the fire was burning to the north,
burning to the west, and burning to the southeast of Los Alamos.
Helicopters have been going overhead for the last hour. The smoke from
the fire looks like the fire is headed toward us. I hope so. There
should be no fuel between the fire and this location after the fire last
year burned it out. At 3:38 p.m., a heavy plane flew over, probably a
slurry bomber. The fire must be getting close. Somebody has been
telephoning and either saying, "Hello, hello, hello." or hanging up when
they hit the answering machine. Wow! There sure are a lot of those
planes going over! Just one after the other. At 4:48 p.m., the sun came
peeking through the smoke, so it has diminished a lot. The planes have
quit flying over us.
Roger Life telephoned and informed me that I had messed up what I wrote
about his schedule. It took Roger 15 minutes to explain that what the
fire fighters are going to do is work their normal 24 hour shift, work
the next 24 hours, and get the next 24 hours off. Why didn't he just say
they were working 48 hours on and 24 hours off? Is it just me or does he
make things too complex?