The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California sent many of its 7,000 employees home early Wednesday and Thursday because of poor air quality resulting from wildfires burning in other parts of the state, a lab spokesperson said.
The early dismissals applied both to employees at the main Livermore campus and the lab’s Site 300 non-nuclear-explosives test facility, the spokesperson said. Both sites are located near the San Francisco Bay area, about 80 miles south of the deadly Camp Fire wildfire burning near Sacramento.
The combination of the fire and weather has created what the spokesperson called a “pocket” of bad air and smoke in the Bay Area, pushing the local air-quality index to over 200. The index runs up to 500. Levels over 200 are generally considered dangerous to humans, the spokesperson said.
A “very small” skeleton crew of employees remained at Livermore, said the spokesperson, who was also at the lab when reached by phone Thursday by Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor. The spokesperson said those who stayed at the lab Wednesday and Thursday were a combination of security personnel and various project employees.
The spokesperson did not know exactly how many people remained at the lab over the two days.
Livermore, a nuclear weapons design and high-energy physics lab, is the younger affiliate to the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Livermore designed the W87 warhead and B83 bomb, and hosts the National Ignition Facility that uses laser to simulate some of the conditions that could be observed during nuclear explosions.
The Camp Fire is one of several wildfires raging in California, including the Woolsey Fire burning just outside the Los Angeles area and several smaller wildfires burning in the state’s central interior.
