Inferno by Committee: A History of the Cerro Grande (Los Alamos) Fire, America’s Worst Prescribed Fire Disaster

by Tom Ribe, Dr. Timothy Ingalsbee (Contributor)

“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.

388 pages, Paperback

First published May 10, 2010

Reviews

[Reida Powell · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the book contained a lot of interesting information, it was extremely repetitive and a little hard to get into. I appreciated the effort of digging through the bureaucratic nightmare that was, arguably, the biggest cause of the disaster.

Also, as someone who has an extremely close personal tie to this situation, I found it left far more questions than answers.
Why was the Pueblo crew’s red card status never investigated?
Why was the one person who took the brunt of the fall blamed instead of those who promised him help?
Why were the firefighters which were involved involved not contacted for an interview for the book?


Would love to sit down and have a conversation with Mr. Ribe sometime. My perspective on this situation is one of a kind.

[Jonna Higgins-Freese · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was quite solid, and gave a nice explication of the politics that constrained and led to the catastrophe, but that's such an old story, and the prose didn't quite take off. The explanation of how the 800 year history of the landscape before the fire shaped what happened was interesting. Probably better if one hasn't already read _Young Men and Fire_ and _Fire Monks_.

[Karl Goodwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a lot of repetition in this book. Like he wrote several different papers on the subject and pulled them together for the book. Great analysis, and pretty objective writing to put blame where it needed to be, and not singling anyone out as the only person at fault.

[Joe Hauglie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last three chapters are the best. The rest of the book - while informative and insightful - suffers from the absence of a good editor.