New Mexico Fires Now Cover 93 Square Miles, Force Thousands To Evacuate (VIDEO)

Firefighters have been working relentlessly near Los Alamos, New Mexico to put out spot fires burning ahead of a massive wildfire Tuesday.

The AP reports that 12,500 people have been evacuated from Los Alamos as a result of the fires, which have grown to cover an area of 93 square miles.

The fires sparked fears due to their close proximity to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a research facility that has several metric tons of plutonium as well as other hazardous materials.

The facility was evacuated Monday, but officials have stressed that everything is under control.

WATCH:

Comments

[themodernleader]

08:14 PM on 06/28/2011

We are told by demigogic politicians that global warming (climate change) doesn't exist. But has anyone outside the southwest realized that these infernal fires are the precursors to deserts the likes we have never imagined.

[julieintx]

10:24 PM on 06/28/2011

Maybe. Half the models predict the Sahara will get wetter, and in fact over the last decades it has.

[Deep Thinking Man]

07:37 PM on 06/28/2011

http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/fmt/fmt_pdfs/fmn60-3.pdf#introductiontoaboriginalfireuseinnorthamerica

controlled burns would be very beneficial, id used properly.

[billso]

07:36 PM on 06/28/2011

"Move along. Nothing to see hear, people." Really?

[Kassandra]

06:47 PM on 06/28/2011

Very smoky around here. For awhile it was from Arizona; the Wallow fire, now it's from this.
Years of drought have finally caught up with the Southwest. clearing the dead stuff would be a great WPA project. Instead our Republcian governor is not going to ban fireworks in the state, so I expect more; maybe even a couple of big towns burned down.
It's very scary what we're doing to the climate

[KarlaElisa]

09:36 PM on 06/28/2011

are you serious? they're gonna let people play w/ fireworks under these circumstances?

i feel for you and totally agree that clearing that dead brush is yet another example of what a WPA project could achieve.

[Tom Czubernat]

06:06 PM on 06/28/2011

John McCain started this fire to keep illegal immigrants out!

Seriously though, the lab has Plutonium, eh? That's the good stuff, the way I understand it.

If the weather doesn't get us, our stupidity will! Why even keep this stuff around?

[Steven JF Scannell]

04:17 PM on 06/28/2011

As a Firefighter I have been thinking for years about better ways to douse flames. One thing is cleaning out tinder fuels, with collection or controlled burns. But another is to use my blimp designs to go to fires and put water right on target. Blimps can be loaded with water from above using aircraft to dump into convex collectors. It also would not be new for blimps to act as air craft carriers, in this case launching planes and helicopters to place water directly on target. Blimps of this nature can also do double duty spreading fertilizer on fuel and forest crops. The fertilizer would be our own waste products. We could probably build five good fire blimps for a few hundred million dollars. These fires are scheduled to be more frequent. We'll need to start talking about strategic water reservoirs. Times are changing.

[KarlaElisa]

04:56 PM on 06/28/2011

see, you're trying to think outside the box. i appreciate that.

i wish instead of building spy and weapon carrying drones that dispatch people, we'd have drones for a purpose such as this. i'm sure the technology must exist, but it must not be as interesting to our military, who've sworn to protect the borders/constitution yet always seem to always be meddling with another country's resources while whittling down their population.

[Steven JF Scannell]

12:03 PM on 06/29/2011

Yes, our idiot leadership irks me to no end as well. Loads of wealth get skimmed off of our economy to people, rich and poor, who have fixed themselves to the bottom of the economic funnel as it were. We the many busily load the funnel from the top.

[ForVivi]

08:05 PM on 06/28/2011

I hope your ideas are heard by the right people.

[Steven JF Scannell]

11:58 AM on 06/29/2011

no, I have no credibility apparently. I'm a mental patient apparently. But I think I'm brilliant, which doesn't count for much. www.environmentalfisherman.com I have solved the energy crisis. I'm a closet inventor. thanks

[AGooglyMinotaur]

04:10 PM on 06/28/2011

Wow... I've got a friend who works in the Los Alamos lab, and she's across the border in AZ right now sleeping on a friend's couch. Scary stuff.

[MFM008]

01:43 PM on 06/28/2011

Glad Rick Santorum is right about that changing climate thing or these wild fires and extreme heat and melting Ice would be troubling.