Posted Tuesday
- June 6, 2000
Toxic
Runoff Feared After Blaze at Los Alamos
Park
Buildings' Fire Danger High
Cape
Hatteras Lighthouse Reopens
N.M. Lab Warned Fire Officials
Critics Say Snowmobile Ban 'Crazy'
Zion National Park Gateway On Auction
Block
Zion National Park Bans Cars
Famous Isolated Phone Booth Removed
Woman Killed by Bear in Tennessee
Grand Canyon Fire Under Control
Firefighters Gain on New Mexico's
Worst Wildfire
Government Takes Blame for N.M. Wildfires
Park Service Saw Risk Before Los Alamos
Fire
INDEX
OF PAST ISSUES
Toxic
Runoff Feared After Blaze at Los Alamos
By BOB DROGIN, Times Staff
Writer --
More than two weeks after
a hellish New Mexico wildfire burned 400 homes and closed
the Los Alamos National Laboratory, concern is mounting
over whether erosion caused by the fire will unleash toxic
and radiological contaminants into the Rio Grande.
Jim Danneskiold, a lab spokesman,
said Friday that emergency teams of hydrologists, soil
scientists and other experts this week began assessing
the threat from dozens of the lab's 626 known "potential
release" sites, many dating back to World War II and the
early Cold War.
So far, he said, they have
identified about a half-dozen former dumps that might
release low-level nuclear and chemical waste into streams
and rivers once the region's annual "monsoon" rains begin
in July. The fire burned off the grasses and brush that
has held the contaminated soil in check. "
There definitely will be
movement of contaminated sediments off lab property,"
Danneskiold said. "It's a question of when, not if, the
flood waters come through." Overall, the Cerro Grande
fire inflicted considerably more damage at the nation's
chief nuclear weapons design and development facility
than officials initially acknowledged. Read
the whole Story .
Saturday
May 27, 2000
Park
Buildings' Fire Danger High
WASHINGTON -- Many buildings
in America's national parks, notably Yosemite and Sequoia
and Kings Canyon in California, are firetraps, federal
investigators said Friday.
The National Park Service,
already in trouble over a purposely set fire that destroyed
or damaged 400 homes in Los Alamos, N.M., earlier this
month, has done little to fix known fire-safety problems,
the U.S. General Accounting Office concluded in a report.
"The safety of park
visitors, employees, buildings and artifacts are being
jeopardized," the GAO, Congress' investigative arm,
concluded after in-depth inspections at six parks.
GAO investigators "found
fire extinguishers that had not been checked for years,
overnight accommodations that had not been inspected by
qualified fire-safety people, cabins without smoke detectors
and visitor centers that did not have fire-suppression
systems."
"Furthermore, Park Service
documents show that even when fire hazards are detected,
they can go uncorrected for years."
Friday
May 26, 2000
Cape
Hatteras Lighthouse Reopens
TBUXTON, N.C. (AP) - Cape
Hatteras Lighthouse reopened Friday in a maritime forest
set 1,600 feet back from the ocean surf that had threatened
to topple the landmark before it was moved last year.
Hundreds of visitors were
waiting to climb the 208-foot brick behemoth when the
heavy bronze doors swung open at 10:05 a.m., and 10,000
were expected to visit over the Memorial Day weekend.
"I liked it by the
ocean. It's something that takes a little getting used
to," said Jeanine Bajack, who has climbed the lighthouse
every year - except 1999 when it was closed for moving.
The lighthouse sat just 150
feet from the Atlantic Ocean before the move. The National
Park Service, which runs Cape Hatteras National Seashore,
worried a severe storm could topple the lighthouse from
its granite foundation.
In June, a contractor jacked
up the lighthouse and moved it on rails pushed by hydraulic
jacks 2,900 feet southwest. The move cost $10 million.
Friday
May 26, 2000
N.M.
Lab Warned Fire Officials
oLOS
ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - The head of fire management at the
Los Alamos nuclear laboratory said he made an unprecedented
plea to National Park Service officials not to start the
prescribed burn that later raged out of control and destroyed
hundreds of homes.
The Santa Fe New Mexican
reported Thursday that Gene Darling, the lab's fire management
officer, said he met May 4 - the day the fire was set
- with two members of the prescribed burn team at nearby
Bandelier National Monument.
"I said,'You know I'd
really prefer you didn't do this,'" Darling told
the newspaper. "It's the first time that I've ever
said that, 'I wish you wouldn't do it.'"
©Copyright
2000, Associated Press
All Rights Reserved
Thursday
May 25, 2000
Critics
Say Snowmobile Ban 'Crazy'
By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press
Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Congressional
critics attacked the National Park Service plan to ban
snowmobiles from most parks, calling the move an unjustified
attempt to please environmentalists.
"It really is crazy
what they're trying to do here," Rep. Collin Peterson,
D-Minn., said Thursday.
The park service announced
last month it was banning nearly all snowmobile traffic
in 25 national parks, recreation areas and other agency
lands.
Conservationists estimated
about 180,000 snowmobilers used park service land last
year.
©Copyright
2000, Associated Press
All Rights Reserved
Thursday,
May 25, 2000
Zion
National Park Gateway On Auction Block< Developers
Threaten Scenic Public Lands
DST. GEORGE, UT
"This is a big problem with
a very simple solution," said Geoff Barnard, President
of the Grand Canyon Trust. "The Secretary of the Interior
and the Governor of Utah should simply pull the LaVerkin
block out of the exchange."
He added that the public
process in the 1990s resulted in a withdrawal of federal
lands leading up to Zion National Park from future land
exchanges. "The Grand Canyon Trust respects the public
process and we think everyone else should respect it,
too." Read
the whole story.
Tuesday
May 23, 2000
Zion
National Park Bans Cars
By HANNAH WOLFSON, Associated Press Writer
ZION NATIONAL PARK, Utah
(AP) - In recent years, the route through the stunning
red cliffs of Zion Canyon has become a big, beautiful
parking lot, filled with tour buses, double-parked motor
homes, and bad tempers. Not anymore.
In an attempt to restore
the peace and quiet that gave Zion its name, the national
park on Tuesday became the first outside of Alaska to
ban nearly all cars from its most popular section.
In most cases, tourists must
now take shuttles from the new visitor center to travel
up the canyon. For the first time in years Tuesday, it
was easy to slow down and experience the park - to hear
the sound of the Virgin River and even catch the buzz
of a hummingbird that stopped to investigate one shuttle
stop. Officials
at crowded national parks across the country said it could
be a glimpse of the future.
"I think it would be
safe to say that in 10 or 20 years a number of parks may
have systems" like this, said National Park Service
spokeswoman Carol Anthony. "Visitation to the national
parks has just been increasing at a phenomenal rate, and
I think that we're finally just facing the issue, to be
quite frank." Read
the whole story.
Tuesday
May 23, 2000
Famous
Isolated Phone Booth Removed
BAKER, Calif. (AP) - Time's
up: The world's loneliest pay phone has been removed.
The phone booth stood for decades in the middle of nowhere,
deep within the Mojave National Preserve.
But Pacific Bell and the
National Park Service said they had to remove the phone
Wednesday because it was attracting too many curiosity-seekers.
"While the phone and its location proved to be a
novelty for some in recent months, the increased public
traffic had a negative impact on the desert environment
in the nation's newest national park," they said
in a statement.
The phone was installed in
the 1960s for use by miners digging volcanic cinder nearby.
It began attracting attention on the Internet about three
years ago. People routinely dialed the number from all
over the world just to see if someone would answer. Often
someone did, usually passers-by who were equally curious
about who was on the other end. All that remains is a
concrete pad
©Copyright
2000, Associated Press
All Rights Reserved
Monday
May 22, 2000
Woman
Killed by Bear in Tennessee
By DUNCAN MANSFIELD, Associated Press Writer
GATLINBURG, Tenn. (AP) -
A woman waiting for her ex-husband on a trail at the Great
Smoky Mountains National Park was killed by a black bear.
Glenda Ann Bradley, 50, of Cosby was mauled Sunday, becoming
the first person killed by a black bear in a federal park
or reserve in the Southeast, park officials said.
"This was simply an
unprovoked attack," Phil Francis, the park's acting
superintendent, said Monday. Bradley, an experienced hiker,
and Ralph Hill, 52, entered the park about noon. The couple,
who had been reconciling, hiked about 10 miles from Gatlinburg.
Hill told authorities he left Bradley on the trail to
go fishing. He returned about an hour later to find her
backpack on the trail and two black bears - an adult female
and a yearling - at her body about 50 yards away. The
111-pound adult bear apparently killed the woman. Two
rangers shot and killed the animals.
©Copyright
2000, Associated Press
All Rights Reserved
Saturday
May 20, 2000
Grand
Canyon Fire Under Control
PHOENIX (AP) - Firefighters
expected to have a wildfire that has been burning north
of the Grand Canyon fully contained by Sunday night and
hoped to open the highway leading into the park on Monday.
The fire burned about 13,350
acres in the Grand Canyon National Park and the Kaibab
National Forest. It was started as a prescribed burn to
remove underbrush on about 1,500 acres, but wind fanned
it out of control. More than 1,200 people were brought
in to fight the blaze.
Many of the firefighters
were already being sent home or to other fires Saturday,
said Steve Frye, incident commander with the Grand Canyon
National Park. The North Rim of Grand Canyon National
Park was expected to be opened to visitors on Monday.
Saturday
May 20, 2000
Firefighters
Gain on New Mexico's Worst Wildfire
By
Marcus Kabel
LOS
ALAMOS (Reuters) - Firefighters gained more ground on
Saturday against New Mexico's worst-ever wildfire, helped
by rain and cooler temperatures, as the premier U.S. nuclear
weapons lab laid plans to reopen after the inferno scorched
its grounds and devastated nearby Los Alamos.
"The
fire's forward movement is next to nil. We're doing quite
well on it,'' said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Joe Pasinato.
The wildfire, sparked by National Park Service brush burning
on May 4 that raged out of control, is now 80 percent
contained and holding for the fourth day at 47,650 acres
consumed within an 89-mile perimeter, Pasinato said.
Thursday
May 18, 2000
Government
Takes Blame for N.M. Wildfires
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (APBnews.com)
-- Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and an entourage of
special investigators acknowledged today that the wildfires
that ravaged Los Alamos and nearby Santa Clara tribal
lands were the result of government mismanagement and
poor planning.
Babbit said the mistakes
included poor planning for the prescribed burn at Bandelier
National Monument that started the fire; failure to properly
review the burn plan beforehand; failure to follow the
plan and failure to call in additional resources to control
the fire once it burned out of control.
He also blamed the blaze
on a miscommunication between the National Weather Service
and the National Park Service. "I would compare this with
a single rock falling down the slope of a mountain and
being joined by other rocks to create a landslide. No
single rock is at fault, but rather the gathering of rocks,
or mistakes along the way, that made this problem of great
magnitude," Babbitt said at a press conference in Los
Alamos.
Thursday
May 18, 2000
Park
Service Saw Risk Before Los Alamos Fire
LOS
ALAMOS, N.M. (Reuters) - The National Park Service, which
started a brush fire that erupted into New Mexico's worst
wildfire, knew in advance its fire was "somewhat
likely" to get out of control, according to agency
documents made available on Wednesday.
The
results of a probe into the wildfire by a team of government
fire management experts are due to be released on Thursday
by U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.
Firefighters
Wednesday continued to battle the blaze sparked by a controlled
burn set May 4 and aimed at preventing just such wildfires
by burning away fuel on the forest floor.
