LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — Hawk-faced Fire Chief Doug Tucker has the aura of an intimidating father-in-law. He has not been without a communications radio, phone or pager for 30 years, he says. He wakes every morning at 4:15 to exercise. There is a heavy-looking silver ax mounted high on his office wall, beside old framed photos of him repelling from helicopters.
Even his name is awesome: Doug Tucker.
"I've fallen through the attic into a burning room," he says with a tinge of veteran's grit in his voice, recalling the early days of a 40-plus-year career that has carried him into the post of Los Alamos Fire Department chief.
That job has considerable weight in the context of two massive wildfires that 11 years apart forced evacuations of Los Alamos — evacuations overseen by Tucker. His is the force standing between acre after acre of dry, superflammable forest and one of the world's foremost nuclear laboratories, a responsibility he takes very seriously.
Tucker, at 62, is retiring. Los Alamos County has posted an opening for the position of fire chief, and he expects he'll be out of the job by September or October.
"I don't know what the future holds," he says. "I'm not one of those guys who has it planned out. I've got a strategic plan for this department, and it's a five-year plan. I can tell you where we're headed as a department. I can't tell you where Doug Tucker's headed, other than to go be with my wife and see what that's like. She may kick my ass out."
During the week of the most recent Los Alamos evacuation caused by the giant Las Conchas Fire, Tucker was The Man. It was Tucker's voice that politicians, the media and the public waited to hear at twice-daily briefings. How big had the fire grown? Did it have a path into town? Had anyone's home burned?
Other officials, including Los Alamos Police Chief Wayne Torpy, were essential in conveying news to the public, and tireless in keeping Los Alamos secure as it sat empty. But Tucker was the guy who reassured folks their houses were safe, or that those radioactive barrels were not going to catch fire.
Tucker sat down with the Journal last week for a genial, one-hour conversation about the evacuations, about his career and how it impacted his family, and about the thrill he'll miss when he's no longer a firefighter.
"To go through a town where you're hanging off the back of a truck, with the lights and the sirens going and you look up to a column of smoke, it is something," he says. "I've raced motocross. I've rodeo'd. I've never had that kind of experience, riding on the back of a truck."
Tucker remembers the exact date he got hired with the Phoenix Fire Department: May 29, 1969.
"That started something I had no idea what it would turn into," he says. "That started a career that to this day I love."
He worked his way to chief officer in Phoenix, then came to Los Alamos in 1994. It was for the schools, Tucker says — he had a 5-year-old stepson and was looking for a good education system.
Tucker was deputy chief during the Cerro Grande Fire in 2000. He supervised as the town evacuated and houses burned to the ground. He watched the toll the evacuation took on families and the elderly community. And pets.
"After Cerro Grande, I talked to a lot of people that evacuated, my wife included. The stress it put on her, with the animals and everything, was amazing to me. It's something I hadn't considered," he says. "During Cerro Grande, we had a yellow Lab. She was probably 6 or 7 at the time, and my wife said it stressed her so much. The dog was upset and throwing up and stuff. The dog was so stressed. They're used to their environment, where they can relax."
The Las Conchas Fire, sparked June 26, was history repeating itself. Another evacuation, this time from a blaze that would rage to more than three times the size of Cerro Grande. Spot fires caused by shooting embers were sparking up to two miles outside the fire's perimeter.
It was Tucker who made the call to empty the town. The trigger for full evacuation was fire burning on Pajarito Mountain ski resort above Los Alamos, which became a pivotal battle ground. From there, it had a path into two canyons filled with dry fuels that hadn't burned during Cerro Grande. Those canyons lead from the ski hill into town, right along people's houses.
"There'll be a lot of Monday morning quarterbacks saying 'You shouldn't have evacuated.' Well, you saw the smoke. That alone is a good reason to self-evacuate. The reason we evacuated was we wanted people out of town so we could protect their homes," he says.
"People don't realize what a tough call that is. Voluntary evacuation is easy. It makes sense that people who want to can do it. But mandatory comes with these economic decisions. There are just the layers, when you shut down businesses and stuff. I talked to a hairdresser, and she hadn't cut hair in a week. That's huge. That's a quarter of her monthly salary."
The town was cleared quickly (it's getting used to this). Then the hard work of heading off the fire began.
"We were averaging a couple hours a night. The first night, there was no sleep," he says. "You get so jacked up in your head, and, when you lay down, you've got all these things you're thinking about. So, instead of just lying there thinking, you get up and deal with them."
Tucker considers the fire a foe. An adversary.
"We were defensive. We never got to go offensive. When you're defensive, you've got to react to what you're seeing, how they're lining up. We look at weather, topography and fuels. How's that lining up for the day? Do you have an opportunity to sack the quarterback? What can you do to stop it? My position is like being a coach and trying to put the team out there in the correct manner so they can respond appropriately and make a difference."
He defines success not by the fire's acreage, he says, but by this number: zero. As in deaths.
Though smoke still sat heavy on Los Alamos, less than one week after the town was emptied, its people were told they could come home.
"The fire's still not out, but we are very comfortable where folks are, because of our capability to protect them," Tucker says.
A second evacuation behind him, Tucker is set to retire. For 42 years, he has lived for the areas he's protected. The stress of the job has caused divorces, he says, because he never learned to balance home life with work that so consumed him. He is quitting because of his wife, because he wants to "get back to her and to my family."
"It's a 24/7 position. The day I came in it was that way. I have not been without a radio or a phone or a pager, probably by now, for about 30 years," he says. "Walking away from that's gonna be one of those hard things to do, to set all those down on the desk and leave them. That's gonna be hard. I have not sat down and prepared myself for the transition. It's like being a smoker — I'm gonna go cold turkey. To me that's the only way I'll be able to do it. They don't have a patch for that.
"I've got an elderly mother and stepfather I'd like to go see and spend some time with. But once it gets boring, God knows what I'll do. I don't know that I can walk away from firefighting.
"It's kick-ass. There's just absolutely no getting around it."
Information from: Albuquerque Journal, http://www.abqjournal.com