Port of entry brush fire illuminates problems

A nearby brush fire threated a small trailer park west of Gallup with fire and heavy smoke. The fire was fueled by high winds June 6. [Photo by Daniel Zollinger/Indpendent]

Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Everyone has nothing but praise for the work that area firefighters did last week in putting out a 2-mile-long brush fire near the port of entry about mile marker 13 on Interstate 40.

The fire was put out in less than six hours and firefighters managed to keep it from spreading to a nearby mobile home park. There were no injuries.

But internally, there were a number of problems encountered in fighting that fire and county and city officials met Monday to discuss some of these problems and how to correct them if future emergencies come up. The meeting was requested by County Sheriff Frank Gonzales who said he had heard that there were problems.

"The first problem we had," said Mark Diaz with the McKinley County Fire Department, "was getting enough volunteers to show up."

The county relies on volunteers to fight fires in the county but most of the volunteers have jobs. The first last week, he said, began about 2 p.m. and when the call went out, most of the volunteers were still at their jobs.

The county had to call the Gallup Fire Department to get assistance but it wasn't until a couple of hours later when Bureau of Indian Affairs forest crews came in from Fort Defiance that there were enough people on the line to fight the fire.

It was also pointed out the call went out for firefighters from Albuquerque and Cibola County but these weren't really needed.

Another problem had to do with radios.

What the county wanted was to have all the departments fighting the fire have radios so that they could communicate with one another, but the reality was that no one had the radios because they cost $800 each and most of the departments couldn't afford them.

Diaz said most firefighters had cell phones and were able to communicate effectively using them.

County Manager Tom Trujillo said if there was a problem with departments not having the funds to get the radios, they should contact him and he would find the money in the county budget to purchase them.

Speaking of communication problems, several agencies reported having problems finding the incident commander at the fire, partly because it was spread over 2 miles and no one seemed to know at times who was in charge.

This led not only to confusion but a decision by some agencies to go on and do their own thing. It was pointed out that the state highway department brought equipment but, for the most part, it was unused because no one was around to coordinate their the efforts.

Diaz said the incident commander was Node Lujan but in the beginning, when there weren't enough men available to fight the fire, he was on the line with the other firefighters, shoveling dirt on the fire.

Gonzales also brought up problems with the area's new Emergency Operations Center that was just built next to Metro Dispatch.

This was supposed to be the central location for coordinating fire efforts but it was ineffective because of lack of funding to get the necessary equipment.

Gonzales was told that while there was money provided for the building of the center, there was no money to equip it so the building is still without land phones and other equipment necessary to cope with emergencies.

The county also has a mobile command unit which was also not available, said Diaz, because there are only a few people who have been trained on how to use it.

But Capt. Jonathan Pablo and Brent Mowrer, both with the Gallup Fire Department, said that despite these problems, the firefighters on the scene were able to get the job done effectively and without any serious damage to property. Twenty people from the mobile home park had to be evacuated for a couple of hours and a powerline was burned, which left the area without electricity for a short period.

Diaz said the fire would not have been so bad except for the winds that day which averaged between 60 and 70 miles an hour. The weather bureau had predicted high winds but Diaz said that no one had predicted the winds would be that high or sustained.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, he said, but preliminary investigations have indicated it may have been caused by someone carelessly tossing away a cigarette.