The head of the Department of Energy’s Environmental Management field office at Los Alamos National Laboratory lavished praise on 1,000 firefighters who battled the Cerro Pelado wildfire in New Mexico, which as of Thurseday was 92% contained.
The residents who lived through major past fires in the region went through “a traumatic experience,” said environmental management field office boss Michael Mikolanis in a Wednesday presentation to the Northern New Mexico Citizens’ Advisory Board.
“I was among those who got to personally thank” the 1,000 people fighting the fire, Mikolanis said.
The Los Alamos Environmental Management (EM) boss said he and his National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) counterpart, Ted Wyka, recently visited the encampment for the firefighters. Mikolanis said Wyka’s message was particularly moving, telling firefighters they were protecting not only the lab and Los Alamos County, but that “they were defending national security.”
Mikolanis, who has been the EM boss at Los Alamos for 10 months, said lessons from past fires have been learned and EM, NNSA, the county and other government agencies are “working from the same sheet of music.”
With the fire-alert status back closer to normal, the legacy cleanup office is resuming certain work put on hold since the fire commenced April 22. Joe Legare of contractor Newport News Nuclear-BWXT Los Alamos said much of the work around Area G was held up during the height of the fire threat.
