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View Full Version : Wildfire shuts Los Alamos lab, forces evacuations



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06-27-2011, 07:31 PM
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. – Thousands of residents calmly fled the town that's home to the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory as a rapidly-growing wildfire approached, sending up towering plumes of smoke, raining down ash and charring the fringes of the sprawling lab's property.

The blaze, which began Sunday, had destroyed 30 structures south of Los Alamos and forced the closure of the lab while stirring memories of a devastating blaze in May 2000 that destroyed hundreds of homes and buildings.

"The hair on the back of your neck goes up," Los Alamos County fire chief Doug Tucker said of first seeing the fire in the Santa Fe National Forest on Sunday. "I saw that plume and I thought, `Oh my god here we go again.'"

Tucker said the current blaze — which had grown to roughly 50,000 acres, or 78 square miles by midday Monday — was the most active fire he had seen in his career. By midafternoon, it had jumped a highway and burned an acre of land on the outskirts of the lab's 36-square mile complex.

Lab officials assured that radioactive material stored at various locations on the lab property was safe from the flames.

http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110628/ap_on_re_us/us_western_wildfires