wfn.org | Presbyterians Join in Relief Effort in Wake of New Mexico Fire

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Note #5894 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

12-May-2000
00191

	Presbyterians Join in Relief Effort in Wake of New Mexico Fire

	PC(USA) churches are undamaged, but some members have lost their homes

	By John Filiatreau

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has made available its
properties in New Mexico -- the Ghost Ranch Center and Plaza Resolana en
Santa Fe -- as emergency quarters for some of the families burned out of
their homes by the Los Alamos fire.

	About 40 displaced people, most of them Korean-Americans who live in White
Rock, N.M., but worship at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe, were
living at the Plaza Resolana in Santa Fe by Friday.

	The 22,000-acre Ghost Ranch property, about 70 miles northwest of Santa Fe,
in Abiquiu, N.M., also had been made available to people as well as to
livestock threatened by the blaze, but there was some question on Thursday
whether it was entirely safe from the rampaging fire. Officials said Friday
that Ghost Ranch probably would be needed to house displaced people
initially lodged in schools and other short-term emergency shelters.

	The Red Cross is coordinating the details of evacuations and relief
efforts, and officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency are on the
scene. About 150 National Guardsmen were called in to maintain order and
prevent looting.

	Conferences and other activities scheduled at the PC(USA) properties,
including a meeting of the board of governors of the Ghost Ranch Foundation,
were postponed because of the disaster. One member of the governors' board,
the Rev. Ed Craxton, associate director for Christian Education in the
Congregational Ministries Division, stayed in the area and joined in the
relief effort. He said the fire came during "a week or two lull before the
summer season begins" at Ghost Ranch.

	Jim Beard, conference planner at Plaza Resolana, said he and his colleagues
on Thursday were "a little frazzled," but were safe and well in Santa Fe,
from which they could see the smoke of the fire, which was about 35 miles
away. He said the highway to Ghost Ranch was closed, but he had been in
touch with officials there by cell phone.

	Rob Craig, executive director of the PC(USA) facilities, said on Thursday
that he'd learned that the high school in the White Rock area near Los
Alamos had burned, "and the high school is not far from" White Rock
Presbyterian Church. Other communities affected by the blaze included
Espanola and Santa Clara Pueblo.

	Craig said the most troubling aspect of the fire on Thursday was that it
was still "not even controlled." Because of winds gusting to more than 60
miles an hour, he said, aircraft couldn't be used to fight the fire "because
the winds would just beat them into the ground."

	Officials said neither of the PC(USA)-related churches in the immediately
threatened area -- White Rock Presbyterian and United community Church, a
multi-denominational place of worship in Los Alamos -- had been damaged.

	 "But I can guarantee you," said the Rev. Bob Barnes, a member of the
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Team who was on the scene, "that some
members of both churches lost their homes."

	Barnes, who lives in Santa Fe, said this was "the first time I've ever done
this kind of work in my own home (area)." He represents both the PC(USA) and
Church World Service, the relief arm of the National Council of Churches.
His assigned task is organizing and coordinating the response of the area's
faith community, but he said Thursday that he was occupied with meeting the
immediate needs of the fire victims.

	Barnes said conditions in the area were "about as bad as they can be,
weather-wise," and recovery officials were in "your basic emergency phase,"
trying to meet people's immediate needs. He said they wouldn't be able to
"really get organized" until the weekend.

	Winds calmed somewhat on Friday, but were still gusting to 30 or 35 mph,
and the fire still had not been brought under control.

	Barnes said Presbyterians can help by praying for the evacuees and the
people who have lost their homes, and by "sending money to the cause."

	"We do not need material goods right now," he said, "but the importance of
money at this point cannot be overstated."

	Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) announced on Thursday that it was
rushing $10,000 from the One Great Hour of Sharing offering to the
Presbytery of Santa Fe.

	The blaze, fanned by seasonally high winds, was burning with such intensity
on Thursday that trees as far as 10 miles from the main body of the fire
were bursting into flames.

	By early yesterday the fire had consumed more than 25,000 acres, destroyed
at least 500 houses and threatened 500 more, and forced more than 30,000
people to leave their homes.

	The fire was set deliberately in the evening of May 4 by the U.S. National
Park Service as a "controlled burn" to clear brush at Bandolier National
Monument, just south of Los Alamos, but was fanned out of control by high
winds. Ironically, the purpose of the burn was to eliminate dry brush that
could serve as fuel for a wildfire.

	The man who authorized the burn -- Roy Weaver, the superintendent of
Bandolier -- was placed on administrative leave Thursday.

	Barnes said people in the area were furious with the Park Service, which
reportedly had been warned by the National Weather Service before it started
the brush burn that conditions were such that potential for uncontrollable
fire growth was at a maximum. It was not known whether Weaver had seen the
forecast.

	"Blame is always a very dynamic phase in a human-caused disaster," Barnes
said Thursday. "That is just beginning now. People are particularly upset
because the fellow who made the decision has been trying to defend it."

	A force of about 1,000 firefighters battled the blaze with bulldozers and
hand tools. The use of firefighting helicopters and planes was limited by
the same high winds that spread the blaze out of control. "This fire has
experienced some severe wind events that were not totally forecast," said
Tom Zimmerman, a National Park Service fire science leader at the National
Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. "That was the variable that killed
us on this one."

	Ed. Pullian, a battalion chief with the Los Alamos fire Department, said
the fire area "looks like a war zone." He said he and his fellow
firefighters on one occasion were forced to drop their equipment and run for
safety. "We didn't have a chance," he told the Associated Press. "We kept
retreating, retreating, retreating, and kept getting overrun."

	Crews on Thursday night burned trees, grass and brush about five miles from
Los Alamos, hoping to create a scorched area without further fuel and
thereby to stop the fire from spreading. Other crews were dousing nearby
homes with water, cutting brush and digging trenches.

	"We're going to chase this fire until the weather changes or it runs out of
fuel," said Jim Paxon, a spokesman for a federal-state fire-management team.

	Los Alamos, about 70 miles north of Albuquerque, is essentially a "company
town" for the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which employs 7,000 people. At
the government site, where scientists created the first atomic bomb a
half-century ago, flames burned trailers and portable buildings and came
within 300 yards of a plutonium storage facility. Lab officials said all
dangerous materials were protected in fire-resistant buildings and in no
danger from the fire.

	"I think the message is, so far, so good," said John Gustafson, a lab
spokesman, "but we're not out of this yet."

	The Associated Press reported that another hazardous-waste area near White
Rock -- and about five miles from the fire -- contains asbestos, low-level
radioactive waste and PCBs stored in steel drums.

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