If Los Alamos National Laboratory does escape the furious wrath of the Cerro Grande Fire, it will be a matter of good planning as much as good fortune. A lab spokesman said Los Alamos officials, sobered by the Dome fire of 1996, have spent the past two years removing brush in trees in the lab's vulnerable western stretches. Danneskiold said lab and fire protection crews removed brush and cut breaks in the trees across Technical Area 16, also known as S-site, where extensive high explosive and environmental tests are conducted. The area also houses the lab's new weapons engineering tritium facility.
Radioactive tritium is the nuclear explosive at the heart of thermonuclear bombs.
Danneskiold said the effort was part of a concerted lab plan, including the Los Alamos Fire Department, that aimed to reduce the potential for a forest fire to encroach on the laboratory following the Dome Fire that threatened the lab in 1996. He said that the combination of the land clearing and firefighters success in backburning the forest bordering N.M. 501 on Tuesday succeeded in keeping the fire from breaking out of the forest and racing across the lab's 43 square miles of relatively open mesas, forested canyons and costly research facilities. Asked whether the lab and firefighting efforts may have saved the lab at the expense of the city, Danneskiold expressed frustration. That's way too complex for me. I can't even begin to address that.