Short of doing a rain dance I am a little unsure how to get the rain forecast to actually materialize, but it's delightful to have any rain on the weather forecast, and today is overcast sending the temperature outside to the lower 80's. Wildfires broke out on local ranches yesterday, including one in Hondo and one on Sam Donaldson's ranch in Arabella.And still more homes burn. What a simply heartbreaking situation we are seeing in the United States. So any people losing their homes to flood, fire, tornadoes that it's hard to take into account all that is happening around us.
Update 1: Los Alamos Scurries To Protect Nuclear Lab From Fire
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., June 28 (Reuters) - New Mexico fire managers scrambled on Tuesday to reinforce crews battling a third day against an out-of-control blaze at the edge of one of the nation's top nuclear weapons production centers.
The fire's leading edge burned to within a few miles (kilometres) of a dump site where some 20,000 barrels of plutonium-contaminated waste is stored at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, fire officials said.
Officials for the government-run lab said the stored waste is considered low-level radioactive material and remains a safe distance from the fire in an area cleared of trees and other vegetation.
Carl Beard, director of operations for the lab, said there has been no release of radioactive or hazardous materials into the environment and there was no immediate threat to public safety, "even in these extreme conditions."
The fire, believed to have been ignited Sunday by a fallen power line, has consumed nearly 69,000 acres of thick, pine woodlands in the Santa Fe National Forest, which surrounds the lab complex and adjacent town of Los Alamos on three sides.
Tucker said he feared the so-called Las Conchas Fire, whipped by high, rapidly shifting winds, could soon double or triple in size.
"I seriously believe it could go to 100,000 acres (40,470 hectares)," he said at a news briefing. "We have fire all around the lab. It's a road away."
A small offshoot of the blaze jumped State Highway 4 onto the lab grounds on Monday, burning about an acre of property before it was extinguished about two hours later.
MONITORING AIR QUALITY
More than 300 firefighters, backed up by a fleet of seven water-dropping helicopters, battled the blaze, as fire managers scurried to bring in additional ground crews.
Lab officials also called in teams late Monday to monitor air quality, with high-volume air samplers ready to deploy. Hundreds of National Guard troops have been dispatched to back up law enforcement in the area.
Both the town of Los Alamos, home to about 10,000 residents, and the laboratory, with a work force of about 12,000 people, were evacuated on Monday, and the lab will remain closed at least through Wednesday, officials said.
Situated on a hilltop 35 miles (56 km) northwest of Santa Fe, the lab covers 36 square miles and includes about 2,000 buildings, none of which has yet burned.
Established during World War Two as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb, it remains one of the leading nuclear arms manufacturing facilities in the United States.
Nuclear Watch New Mexico said on its website its greatest concern was for the 20,000 55-gallon sealed drums of plutonium-tainted waste stored at one corner of the complex, some stacked in the open on asphalt, some in tents, some buried underground.
Fire officials say if the blaze did manage to reach the area, they would use fire-retardant foam to douse the flames.
Meanwhile I keep returning to my own dilemma. My oldest daughter and I discussed this awful situation yesterday afternoon, but we just can't find a resolve for she, like myself, can't finance a newer mobile home, or anything.
By midnight last night I was so ill I couldn't sleep, yet couldn't sit at the computer either. I sat outside this shed with tears running down my face. It's so hard not to feel the searing pain. Tomorrow it will be July 1st. I have to get flowers delivered to my mother before July 4th.My boss needed medication picked up at Lawrence Brothers so before noon today I went to get it for him before driving to the Lazy J Ranch. I walked into the store with the credit card and the truck keys in my hand and a lousy migraine blowing my head off my shoulder.
While stood waiting for the prescriptions I wondered over to the deli to get something to eat. That led to a conversation with a group of people wondering why there was so much smoke being seen above Ruidoso. I pulled my cell phone out my pocket and phoned my daughter and son-in-law to see if they had heard anything over the emergency band radio, and realized that I didn't have the credit card in my hand.
Despite re-tracing my steps, looking under everything where it may have fallen, frantically looking everywhere for over an hour that credit card was gone never to be found. I was simply besides myself but I am so stressed, exhausted and so ill that even functioning is beyond me. How do you keep going when you have nothing left to go forward with?
I have to borrow the courage to face yet another month without hope of a home in sight, and I just don't know how to do that. Watching June go by has been excruciating. I had so much hope that if I could physically and emotionally hang on for one more winter surely some miracle would happen come spring.
But it didn't, and my nerves are shattered.
Someone in the Ogilvie-Huckins family must have Robert Huckins ears. I don't know if that person is Liam Griffin, Michael Huckins, Dr.Kenneth Ogilvie , Patricia Ogilvie-Huckins or someone else. There is simply no-way that our building fund has been spent, there is simply no-way that all of the stolen money from victims has been spent. Common sense dictates that it is hidden somewhere. Just as Robert Huckins sat in jail on $100,000 bond having withdrawn $110,000 out of the Wells Fargo bank only a few weeks earlier. He knew that he had the $110,000 - but he was not going to reveal where. I am simply begging for the return of our building fund. Robert and Sylvi Huckins will very happily watch women homeless and have no mercy upon those he stole from and destroyed. I am begging you to have mercy and retrieve our building fund so that we can have a home and this torture ended. Literally begging. You may be our ONLY hope left bar a miracle.
Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. ~ Robert F. Kennedy
