These are pictures which I took while part of my National Guard unit was activated to help keep people out of the Bosque after the fires last summer. We were activated for 14 days total, but were allowed to go back to our regular jobs after 12 days. It was neat at first but after the first few days really got boring. Still, it was kind of cool to drive around off-road in the trucks all night long. :-)
Here we are on the first day down in the Home Depot parking lot
at Coors and I-40. The Red Cross, Albuquerque Police Department,
Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department, and a number of other
organizations were all there to donate their time and assistance.
Another picture of what we did for about the first 2 hours of
getting there: stand around doing nothing. Since this whole
mission was just getting started (I'd been called while at work
and had to leave early) there were a lot of details to work out.
While standing around, I was yanked up for a quick driving mission to
escort some of the TV media folks down into the burned area. Here we
are while stopped at Coors and Montano. Montano had been closed down
completely between 4th street and Coors to allow the fire crews access
and to keep people out since the fire had been right in that area.
APD was also out blocking off the road and keeping people out of the
Bosque and we worked right along side with them in closing roads.
A picture looking east down Montano from Coors. The fire department
had fire fighters and equipment basically camped out on Montano for
a week or so to help put out any hot spots which might flare up.
Turning onto the access road along the Bosque we stopped to allow
the media folks to take some video of the area. Here is a look
into some of the burned area. It was quite extensive and still
very hot in some spots. The smell was something else too.
The media were always having us stop to take "action" pictures.
I remember seeing this video of the truck driving away on TV.
You can see Keely Chalmers in the background making more video.
I walked down into the burned area and took this picture. It's
rather spooky with the smoke hanging in the air and the ash.
Here we are driving further into the Bosque for more pictures.
Later on that night we drove around to some of the other checkpoints to
check on them and drop off water and food. Here is SPC McDonald raising
the antenna on their truck near 4th street and Montano. There had been
radio problems all night long because folks weren't putting the antennas
up. A few days later we put up an OE-254 at HQ and it worked great.
A few days later the Air National Guard helped us out be activating
some of their folks. Their Security Police folks brought along ATV's
to get into the Bosque in parts they didn't want us driving our trucks
around in. Later they gave the class to a bunch of the Army folks and
let them drive around on the ATV's. I skipped that class, riding those
was a very dusty job and I didn't want it no matter how fun it would be.
Hot spots continued to flare up pretty much the whole time
we were down there. Here are some fire fighters we called up
taking care of one of the ones we found in our patrols.
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