Inferno by Committee
A History of the Cerro Grande (Los Alamos) Fire, America’s Worst Prescribed Fire Disaster
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The Cerro Grande Fire was one of the most misunderstood yet important events in New Mexico and Western United States history. It had large affect on the Western United States, as the lessons learned from it changed federal fire policy permanently. The story told here boils down to the hard lessons learned and the new practices enacted on every prescribed fire and even most wild fires in America ever since. If any theme dominated my study of the Cerro Grande Fire, it was the complexity of environmental history and the complexity of wildfire and fire management. Fire truly is a fascinating event that is driven by multiple environmental factors that play into each other in ways that even career professionals never fully understand. The natural world is sensitive and delicate and our exploitations have long lasting consequences. Prescribing fire on the landscape involves risk. Sometimes, as with the Cerro Grande Fire, the risk taken results in disaster. For land managers, there really is no option but to prescribe fire and take risk, to restore fire to a landscape where fire is native and necessary for the survival of the biological systems. Cerro Grande showed us both the consequences of taking a risk with fire and more dramatically, the consequences of avoiding that risk.
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About the Book
“Tom Ribe's clear, scrupulous and thorough account of the Los Alamos/Bandelier fire of 2000 is a white-knuckle narrative, yet meticulously accurate.”
—Roger G. Kennedy, Former Director, U.S. National Park Service; Director Emeritus, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution and author of Wildfire and Americans
Inferno by Committee tells the story of America’s worst prescribed fire disaster, the Cerro Grande Fire of 2000 which burned 250 homes in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The fire started with a National Park Service prescribed fire that went out of control and ended up burning 42,000 acres of the Santa Fe National Forest. A thorough review of the investigations of the fire and the policy changes that resulted from this seminal event in American fire history are also an integral part of this examination. Prescribing fire on the landscape involves risk. Sometimes, as with the Cerro Grande Fire, the risk taken results in disaster. For land managers, there really is no option but to prescribe fire and take risk—to restore fire to a landscape where fire is native and necessary for the survival of biological systems. Cerro Grande showed us both the consequences of taking a risk with fire and more dramatically, the consequences of avoiding that risk.
About the Author
Tom Ribe is an expert on public lands policy and law. He has his MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Oregon, has worked for the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service. He has written extensively on public lands. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.