Report: LANL not serious about blazes
SANTA FE — A recently released report by the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General suggests that managers at Los Alamos National Laboratory did not take wildland fire prevention seriously enough, despite two catastrophic wildland fires in the past 20 years that threatened the lab and the town, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
“Our review found that activities designed to reduce the impact from wildland fire had not been fully implemented at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in accordance with site plans,” says the opening sentence of a 14-page memo from the Inspector General’s office dated Feb. 1.
What’s worse, the report says, some plans were never drafted, and some policies put into place after the Cerro
Grande Fire in 2000 and the Las Conchas Fire in 2011 were not being followed.
It adds that lab managers haven’t developed a “comprehensive risk-based approach to wildland fire management,” as required by the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. The report also describes a “lack of formality.”
“Specifically, the contractor’s Wildland Fire Plan lacked requirements for documenting wildland fire management activities, and responsibilities for implementation were not well defined,” the report says.
The contractor referred to is Triad National Security LLC, which in November 2019 took over management of the lab, which is tasked with developing and manufacturing parts for nuclear weapons. Previously, Los Alamos National Security LLC had held the management contract since 2006.
It appears evident that some of the problems identified in the report predate Triad’s involvement.
The report says that there are about 2,000 structures, including 13 nuclear facilities, with an estimated value of $14.2 billion on approximately 23,000 acres of lab property.
It notes that the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire, which burned 43,000 acres, including about 7,500 acres of LANL property, resulting in $331 million in damage to the lab alone. That does not include an estimated $15 million in lost productivity per week during a 15-day shutdown and recovery period.
The Cerro Grande Fire was a “crown fire” that burned through the tree canopy and spread quickly, and the report has an entire section on mitigation of crown fires.
Despite recognition of the risk, mitigation measures to reduce the risk of crown fires had not been performed.
The Las Conchas Fire burned about 156,293 total acres but only 1 acre of LANL land. It started when a tree fell on a power line in the Santa Fe National Forest outside of town.
The report says the Wildland Fire Plan in place identified a need to manage areas where there are power lines.
“However, vegetation maintenance in buffer zones below overhead power lines was not always completed,” the report says.
In addition, the report says, some fire roads were not maintained to ensure that firefighters and equipment could get through. Some roads were so narrow they wouldn’t permit emergency vehicles to turn around.
The report also says the inspector general wasn’t provided with any evidence that emergency preparedness activities were being followed.
“Without documenting planning and preparedness activities, there was no assurance that all prevention and mitigation options were considered and the site was fully prepared for wildland fire events,” it says.
While the emergency preparedness group leader and technical specialists said annual updates were being completed, the only documentation they could provide was a color-coded burn probability map.
A technical specialist told inspectors that they addressed fuel reduction projects by “chasing the red” areas on the map, but no written justification was provided.
“These contractor officials also noted that projects were sometimes selected because they were less complex and did not require as many resources,” the report says.
The report identifies tree thinning as one fire mitigation task that lab managers weren’t diligent about. It says inspectors found there were 400 to 500 trees per acre in Los Alamos Canyon, although there should be only 40 to 50 trees in an acre.
“This was concerning since these contractor officials also informed us that a potential release site exists at the bottom of this canyon, which could produce a health risk to the environment and to human health during a fire,” the report says, adding that another concern was that several mission-critical facilities are on mesas above the canyon.
The report makes four recommendations that Triad agreed to:
Conduct a sitewide wildland fire risk assessment in accordance with federal policy;
Develop a mitigation plan based on the risk assessment results;
Establish a formal process to capture and track data; and
Ensure actions described in the Wildland Fire and Forest Health Plan are implemented.
In a statement, LANL said it has already begun to address issues raised in the report.
“LANL has an aggressive approach to wildfire management on its 39-square-mile campus, including thinning of vegetation along access routes, making improvements to fire access roads and the recent removal of thousands of trees downed by windstorms. We continue to review our wildfire and forest health plans, and have already implemented many of the recommendations the Department of Energy offered to improve our efforts to protect the public, the environment and the Laboratory.”
The report also takes the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos Field Office to task for failing to provide proper oversight. It says the field neither conducted formal assessments nor verified completion of mitigation efforts.