Faces & places
Santa Fe author Sally Denton’s
book, The Profiteers: Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World, has won the Best Investigative Book of the Year award from the nonprofit Investigative Reporters and Editors. She will be honored by the organization at a conference in June. Denton is an investigative reporter, author and historian, according to a biography on her website. She has an extensive background in print and broadcast journalism, as well as magazine and book writing. She also is the director of literary nonfiction at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, Nev., and has received numerous awards for her work. A message on the IRE website says the judges admired Profiteers for its “historical lead-up and the contemporary exposé” of Bechtel. “Denton dug beneath the veneer of secrecy to reveal the unconscionable interconnections between government agencies and Bechtel,” the website says.
Family and friends have welcomed a visit with U.S. Army Sgt. Leslie Lucia Varela DeMella of Santa Fe, who serves with A Company, 51st ESB, at her home base of Joint Base Lewis McCord in Washington. DeMella deploys to her new assignment in South Korea shortly.
The National Association of State Foresters, the National Fire Protection Association, the U.S. Forest Service and the International Association of Fire Chiefs have chosen the Santa Fe Fire Department’s Wildland Division to receive the highest national honor, a Wildfire Mitigation Award, in recognition of its work to prepare for, mitigate and respond to wildfires locally, throughout New Mexico and nationally.
Long recognized as a leader in wildland urban interface firefighting, the Wildland Division does a range of work to protect the greater Santa Fe fireshed, which includes parts of the Santa Fe National Forest, Tesuque Pueblo, Hyde Memorial State Park and other state lands, Santa Fe County public lands, Nature Conservancy lands and other private properties.
Santa Fe Wildland Division crews have responded to several major wildfires, including last year’s McClure Fire in the Santa Fe Watershed, the Dog Head Fire in New Mexico’s Manzano Mountains, and the fires late last year in Tennessee and North Carolina.