By then, it may have been too late, according to a harsh government report issued last week. The fire consumed nearly 50,000 acres and destroyed more than 400 homes in the surrounding area, causing an estimated $1 billion in damage. Flames engulfed large portions of the sprawling Los Alamos National Laboratory complex –though the Energy Department says there were no radioactive leaks from the lab’s sensitive nuclear facilities.
The blame game was quick to follow. On Thursday, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt delivered a damning assessment of the disaster, chastising officials at the park for poor planning and lack of preparation. Babbitt said those in charge made “seriously flawed” calculations about how the fire would behave, and took them to task for not having fire crews ready in case something went wrong. The official in charge of Bandelier, 33-year Park Service veteran Roy Weaver, was put on administrative leave. He and Powell could face more trouble soon. (Neither could be reached for comment.) Investigators are trying to piece together a clearer picture of what went wrong, but officials tell NEWSWEEK that Powell and his superiors may have failed to follow safety procedures designed to prevent just this sort of disaster –and likely could have stopped it altogether had they acted in the first few hours.
In practice, controlled burns are fairly routine events. Long before striking the first match, park employees are supposed to follow a precise set of safety procedures –checking everything from weather and wind conditions to the possibility of endangered species in the proposed burn zone. They then take all of this information and give the burn a “complexity rating” –a numerical estimate of how dangerous the proposed fire is expected to be. Overseeing everything is a burn boss, an experienced firefighter with a mastery of the arcane science of “Advanced Wildland Fire Behavior Calculations.” More complex fires are given to the most experienced burn bosses.
Yet, according to the government report, burn boss Mike Powell did not have the experience to handle such a large fire. Park officials assigned the Bandelier fire a complexity rating of 87, which put it in the “low-moderate” range. But Interior Department investigators now say that number greatly underestimated the danger of the fire. It should have ranked a higher 137 –a much more complex fire than Powell had ever managed. The report also says that Powell and other park officials underestimated the amount of fire equipment that would be needed and did not monitor weather information carefully enough.
The first error, according to the government’s report, happened several hours before the fire started. At 1 p.m. on Thursday, May 4, Powell phoned the Santa Fe Zone Dispatch –a command center that deploys state and federal firefighters to combat wildfires –to let them know he was going to initiate a prescribed burn at Bandelier later that day. The dispatcher on duty expressed concern, since other wildfires were already burning out of control in the region. Despite the warning, Powell lit a test fire; when it appeared to burn as planned, a wider area was set ablaze.
By 10 p.m., however, Powell already noticed that one part of the fire had spread outside the intended boundary “faster than anticipated,” according to the report. Several hours later, at around 3 a.m., Powell again phoned Zone Dispatch, this time telling them he would need 20 additional firefighters and a helicopter at dawn. But investigators say Powell did not tell the dispatcher he was now fighting a wildfire –and the dispatcher told him to call again in the morning. When he did, the dispatcher told Powell that he couldn’t send in more firefighters unless there was an emergency. For some reason, Powell still did not tell the dispatcher the fire was out of control. If he had, says one official, “they would have immediately dispatched” crews to battle the blaze. Instead, a wildfire wasn’t declared for nearly six more hours.
Interior Department officials still want to know why Powell’s superiors, particularly park superintendent Weaver, assigned Powell as burn boss in the first place, and didn’t monitor him more closely. But investigators say they are waiting until they complete their investigation before taking disciplinary action. At the weekend, only Weaver, Powell’s boss, had been put on leave. Powell was reportedly still working at the park. The administration’s quick admission of responsibility for the disaster –and its promise to compensate people whose homes or businesses were burned –may not be enough. Some of the 11,000 New Mexicans displaced by the fire are already threatening lawsuits, hoping those responsible for the fire will feel a little heat themselves.
