[PDF] Fire Management Lessons Learned From The Cerro Grande Los Alamos Fire eBook

Author :
Publisher :
Page : 18 pages
File Size : 46,51 MB
Release : 2000
Category :
ISBN :

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We are here today to discuss two related issues, lessons learned from the recent Cerro Grande fire, and, on a broader note, actions needed to mitigate current hazardous forest conditions in the interior West. Only a few months ago, the Los Alamos fire, now officially known as the Cerro Grande fire, caused hundreds of families in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to lose their homes and more than 18,000 residents of the state to be evacuated. Over 1,000 fire fighters were required to bring the fire under control. Estimates have placed total damages at about $ 1 billion. This tragedy was the result of a prescribed fire ignited by officials of the National Park Service. Ironically, the fire was ignited in an effort to reduce some of the vegetative buildup in a forested area of Bandelier National Monument and thus help prevent the very kind of event that occurred. The plan was to burn up to 900 acres; in the end about 48,000 acres were burned. The policy supporting the use of prescribed or controlled burns as a forest management tool has been in place for some time. According to analyses by federal land management agencies, the use of prescribed burns has been and will continue to be a critical component of forest management if the nation wants to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, particularly in the interior West. The need to reduce these risks has never been more obvious as it as at this time. While the Cerro Grande fire demonstrated this, as events have unfolded, it was only the beginning of what has turned out to be one of the worst wildfire seasons in history with over 4 million acres already burned and dozens of fires still burning in many western states. In reviewing the events surrounding the Cerro Grande fire, we examined how well the policy was implemented and what, if any, lessons can be learned to prevent future tragedies like it.

Author : U S Government Accountability Office (G
Publisher : BiblioGov
Page : 56 pages
File Size : 46,76 MB
Release : 2013-06
Category :
ISBN : 9781289112394

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Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the circumstances surrounding the Los Alamos wildfire, focusing on: (1) the events leading up to the prescribed fire and how it was managed; and (2) what fire management policies or practices need to be improved. GAO noted that: (1) the Cerro Grande fire exposed policy implementation issues that need to be addressed for managing prescribed fires; (2) most of the issues involved procedural gaps or a lack of clarity about how policies are to be implemented; (3) these issues affected both the planning and implementation of the burn; (4) some of the issues are specific to Bandelier National Monument and the National Park Service; (5) however, others involve other federal agencies; and (6) those problems that are not site--or agency--specific raise questions about the readiness of the federal land management agencies to effectively support and administer prescribed burns as a forest management tool.

Author : U S Government Accountability Office (G
Publisher : BiblioGov
Page : 56 pages
File Size : 28,38 MB
Release : 2013-06
Category :
ISBN : 9781289032852

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Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the circumstances surrounding the Los Alamos wildfire, focusing on: (1) the events leading up to the prescribed fire and how it was managed; and (2) what fire management policies or practices need to be improved. GAO noted that: (1) the Cerro Grande fire exposed policy implementation issues that need to be addressed for managing prescribed fires; (2) most of the issues involved procedural gaps or a lack of clarity about how policies are to be implemented; (3) these issues affected both the planning and implementation of the burn; (4) some of the issues are specific to Bandelier National Monument and the National Park Service; (5) however, others involve other federal agencies; and (6) those problems that are not site--or agency--specific raise questions about the readiness of the federal land management agencies to effectively support and administer prescribed burns as a forest management tool.

Author : Tom Ribe
Publisher : Trafford Publishing
Page : 391 pages
File Size : 42,45 MB
Release : 2010-05-12
Category : History
ISBN : 1426985142

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“Tom Ribe's clear, scrupulous and thorough account of the Los Alamos/Bandelier fire of 2000 is a white-knuckle narrative, yet meticulously accurate.” —Roger G. Kennedy, Former Director, U.S. National Park Service; Director Emeritus, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution and author of Wildfire and Americans Inferno by Committee tells the story of America’s worst prescribed fire disaster, the Cerro Grande Fire of 2000 which burned 250 homes in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The fire started with a National Park Service prescribed fire that went out of control and ended up burning 42,000 acres of the Santa Fe National Forest. A thorough review of the investigations of the fire and the policy changes that resulted from this seminal event in American fire history are also an integral part of this examination. Prescribing fire on the landscape involves risk. Sometimes, as with the Cerro Grande Fire, the risk taken results in disaster. For land managers, there really is no option but to prescribe fire and take risk—to restore fire to a landscape where fire is native and necessary for the survival of biological systems. Cerro Grande showed us both the consequences of taking a risk with fire and more dramatically, the consequences of avoiding that risk.

Author : Tom Ribe
Publisher : Trafford on Demand Pub
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 37,16 MB
Release : 2010
Category : History
ISBN : 9781426929878

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"Tom Ribe's clear, scrupulous and thorough account of the Los Alamos/Bandelier fire of 2000 is a white-knuckle narrative, yet meticulously accurate." —Roger G. Kennedy, Former Director, U.S. National Park Service; Director Emeritus, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution and author of Wildfire and Americans Inferno by Committee tells the story of America's worst prescribed fire disaster, the Cerro Grande Fire of 2000 which burned 250 homes in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The fire started with a National Park Service prescribed fire that went out of control and ended up burning 42,000 acres of the Santa Fe National Forest. A thorough review of the investigations of the fire and the policy changes that resulted from this seminal event in American fire history are also an integral part of this examination. Prescribing fire on the landscape involves risk. Sometimes, as with the Cerro Grande Fire, the risk taken results in disaster. For land managers, there really is no option but to prescribe fire and take risk—to restore fire to a landscape where fire is native and necessary for the survival of biological systems. Cerro Grande showed us both the consequences of taking a risk with fire and more dramatically, the consequences of avoiding that risk.

Author : United States Government Accountability
Publisher : Scholar's Choice
Page : 56 pages
File Size : 13,83 MB
Release : 2015-02-14
Category :
ISBN : 9781298016393

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