Evacuation lifted for Los Alamos
As of 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, July 3, the evacuation order for the Los Alamos town site has been lifted, except, State Route 4 remains closed west of Monterey Drive South and all access points to the Jemez Mountains remain closed.
Here is an excerpt from a fire update on New Mexico Fire Information, issued at 7:35 a.m. July 3:
Firefighters made good progress yesterday. Overcast skies and higher relative humidity played a vital role in moderating fire behavior. Some rain was received on portions of the fire. There was no major movement of the fire today, and firefighters were able to get handline around the northeast corner of the fire. A lightning strike started a small fire east of White Rock which was quickly contained by numerous fire resources.
The fire has burned 121,248 acres and is reportedly 11% contained.
Maps
It has now been a week since the Las Conchas fire in northern New Mexico started on June 26 and today, Sunday July 3, the incident management team has posted current maps of the fire, produced from data collected on an infrared mapping flight that occurred yesterday at 10:54 p.m. This is a major improvement by the IMTeam in providing one of the important facts about the largest fire in Arizona history — where it is. Before this weekend, if there was a map on the IMTeam’s InciWeb site at all, it contained data 36-48 hours old by the time it was posted. The earliest map on the IMTeam’s InciWeb site is dated June 30.
Photos
The IMTeam has not posted any photos of the fire. We just discovered that “Las Conchas Fire Information” has posted photos, not on InciWeb, but on Flickr. Los Alamos National Laboratory posted some images on Flickr until they stopped on July 1. A Wildfire Today reader sent us some great photos he took shortly after the fire started.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, in cooperation with a private company, has posted some interesting aerial images of the fire and the surrounding areas using new technology developed for the military.
