~ Lost Almost ~

by

Lynnette Baughman

One

Wednesday, May 10, 2000

Los Alamos, New Mexico

Nine ambulances idled side by side at the west end of Los Alamos Medical Center, their doors closed to keep the smoke and cinders out as long as possible. Ambulance crews from Santa Fe and the Española Valley, called by the State Emergency Operations Center, paced the parking lot, anxious to load their patients and get off the Hill. From the west, red clouds of smoke roiled out of Bandelier National Monument, blocking the sun and gathering strength from the winds gusting to forty miles per hour. It was 5:15 p.m.

The three highways leading east out of Los Alamos toward the valley carved by the Rio Grande were clogged with cars full of people and terrified pets. Police sawed the chains off a gate to San Ildefonso Pueblo land, opening a fourth emergency evacuation route at the north end of town. The Jemez Mountains that formed the back and arms of an overstuffed green chair around the town and laboratory no longer offered sanctuary. Instead, the mountains and canyons were fast becoming a cauldron. Soon the winds would gust to seventy-five miles per hour and the fire would breed its own hurricane-force winds. In an hour, temperatures would reach three thousand degrees Fahrenheit, and houses would not just burn, but explode.

The battalion chief directing the evacuation of the hospital weighed the dangers. Should he send the ambulances into gridlock with their sirens feeding panic, or move the patients to the hospital’s basement? To his immense relief, the traffic cleared and he gave the signal to move out. The drivers and paramedics flew into action. Like a movie running backward, the patients were wheeled past the Emergency Entrance sign and loaded into the ambulances.

Meanwhile, the inferno gushed down from the wide funnel where Los Alamos Canyon began into the narrow neck of the canyon spanned by Omega Bridge. Hemmed in by walls of volcanic tuff, the fire paused to consume the huge Ponderosa pines on the canyon floor, then explored for fuel on the canyon walls. Tongues of flame crossed the road to kindle the shrubs that clung to the sheer north wall and to the sturdy pine trees for support. It was as if the parched shrubs were fuses on a massive row of pine tree rockets. Scant minutes later a wall of flame erupted straight up the north side of the canyon, igniting houses on Fairway Drive only a few hundred yards from the hospital.

The last ambulance doors slammed shut and sirens wailed away toward the east. The evacuation of the town was complete, with no time to spare.

The Cerro Grande Fire was officially out of control and bending its towering flames over Los Alamos like the neck of a dragon.

~ * ~

Arkady Valentin had kissed his wife and daughter good-bye at twelve-thirty. Their wooden house with shake shingle roof sat on the perimeter of the Santa Fe National Forest, at the end of a cul-de-sac in the section of Los Alamos known as North Community. The privacy afforded by acres of Ponderosa pines made the house prime kindling if the wind brought the flames north.

Arnie, Leah and Katy had carried armfuls of valued possessions to the Dodge Caravan and firmly shoved them inside. As Arkady wrapped his grandfather’s brass menorah in a towel, he had to stop and catch his breath at a thud of pain in his chest, the same kind of pain he imagined Moshe Valentin felt when he packed the menorah in Russia so many years before. Then, too, flames closed on the Valentin family, fires set by a mob intent on driving Jews out of Russia.

Leah placed the family’s Haggadah on the floor behind the driver’s seat. The leather-bound story read each Passover Seder was all that was left of her mother’s family, a lone memento saved by a little girl, who was saved in turn by a Dutch couple.

"You know where to go?" Arnie said as he carried a box marked "Tax info" to the sliding door and wedged it into the last available space.

"We’re fine, yes. If they say to evacuate before you get back, Katy and I will go to the Baptist church in White Rock and wait there for you." Leah spoke to him, but her eyes were fixed in a stare toward the smoke clouds to the south.

Arnie’s eyes were on Leah’s face, her skin dry as corrugated paper from the ravages of disease. No, he corrected himself, from the ravages of treatment, one last protracted attempt to kill the cancer cells that had metastasized from breast cancer. Chemotherapy treatments at three-week intervals had been followed by four weeks of radiation. A tan silk turban covered his wife’s head, bald for the second time in five years.

"What about Ben?" Katy asked indignantly as she marched from the house carrying a pile of schoolbooks. Benjamin, a white poodle-schnauzer cross, whined pathetically and ran in circles around Katy, lest he be forgotten.

"There’s room for him on top of the computer. See, there’s a nice soft rug." Arnie caught Ben in midair as the dog levitated toward the passenger seat. "Keep him in the house until you have to go. There’s still a chance they’ll stop the fire and we can stay home." His tone of voice invited no argument from his daughter.

Katy possessed intelligence far beyond her eleven years. In fact, she was doing college level math in a program for gifted children, but emotionally she was still a little girl, and she was scared. Scared of the fire, scared of her mother’s cancer, and scared of the helpless feeling that she’d be left like her mother’s mother, alone in the world, one leather-covered book her only possession. But she wouldn’t admit to being fearful. Anger was her preferred emotion, a reliable fallback position whenever people and events spun out of control.

"You don’t care about our house! You won’t let us stay and try to save our house!"