A pair of Youth Conservation Crew members working on a trail. Courtesy/YMCA
By DIANA MARTINEZ
Communications Director
The Family YMCA
The havoc of the Cerro Grande Fire in 2000 that destroyed 235 Los Alamos homes, and miles and miles of community footpaths and forests tested community members’ and neighbors’ mettle as only fire can.
The high school’s graduating class of 2000, most not liking it, was dubbed the class of Cerro Grande. May 10, students and the community evacuated an oncoming fire juggernaut, leaving behind athletes’ running shoes and equipment for upcoming state championships.
The community evacuated orderly and kindly, drivers patiently waived cars in from side streets.
We were displaced, refugees, yet our neighbors opened their hearts and homes and hotels, most often for free, expecting nothing. White Rock was evacuated May 11, shortly after midnight. We watched live video of neighborhoods we knew being devoured by an insane fire monster that sometimes left trees and homes untouched while utterly wiping out others.
A sickening black-brown smoke filled the sky and turned the sun to red as the fire bellowed its path of destruction. Santa Clara Canyon, home of the Puye Cliff Dwellings was devastated. To the displaced, the fire seemed to last forever, but eventually, on May 18 residents were allowed to return. At that time, the fire was the largest in our state; it destroyed 150,000 acres, affected 400 families and damaged buildings in town and at the Laboratory.
Yet no one died in the fire. We saw leadership, responders, individuals rise up to serve. There are so many stories. High school students in the state sent pet food for displaced animals; others donated prom dresses and sports equipment. People missed their neighbors and their neighborhoods. FEMAville eventually went up on North Mesa. We learned the fire burned so hot that the soil became hydrophobic – water would roll off rather than absorb so flooding threats loomed.
The newspaper showed graphics of how the forest would regrow over time, and community volunteers by the hundreds wanted to help that happen. Interagency task forces worked together to mitigate damage, and a community educator and naturalist by the name of Craig Martin created a Volunteer Task Force to coordinate schools, scouts, and locals to help plant and water ponderosa pine seedlings, and rebuild our trails.
Martin has said the community response and many other lessons, including the use of straw to mitigate flooding, became known as The Los Alamos Affect among wildland firefighters. People wanted to “do” something and they did, and it helped them to heal. The middle sized pine trees growing up along the highways and footpaths now in our community were planted by these volunteers. It was an intentional placement according to Martin, so that people could watch them grow and know that things would get better.
A year after the fire, Los Alamos County obtained a state grant to host four Youth Conservation Crews to address environmental needs. The program went on hiatus until 2008, when Los Alamos’ Juvenile Justice Advisory Board wrote a grant for The Family YMCA to host a crew for the same purpose, which was granted.
Since then, the Y continues to apply for the funding to put local youth to work on public projects for community good. And the Y’s YCC crew still continues to address impacts from the Cerro Grande Fire and the 2011 Las Conchas Fire. Los Alamos County’s Open Space Specialist Eric Peterson and the US Forest Service’s Española Ranger District partner with the Y for this program.
Applications for summer employment with the YCC are due by March 16. Positions are open to local and neighboring youth ages 14 to 25. For more information, go to https://laymca.org/y-corps
A video on this work can be seen here.
