On the recordMarch 10, 2014
I thank my friend the Senator from New Jersey. These issues have such a profound impact on individual people and communities. When I think back to that Las Conchas fire that I talked about a little bit in my comments, I cannot help but think about Santa Clara Pueblo. Actually, maybe we can put up this other image too, because normally the fires lie down at night. That is what they used to do, at least. Here you can see the fire burning north of Los Alamos in the Jemez mountains in the middle of the night. You can imagine, this was sort of a scene from Espanola and Santa Fe across the valley. Everyone I talked to at the time had never seen a conflagration in the northern part of the State quite like it. One community that was particularly impacted and is still recovering today is Santa Clara Pueblo. They have this incredible, beautiful canyon that is tied to their identity and their religion and who they are as a people. Unfortunately, this fire burned the headwaters of that canyon, and that produces the water for their irrigation, as well as with the Rio Grande. It is more than just economics. It is an identity. It is a place that cannot be separated from the community and the people there. The impact of that, unlike a typical disaster we think about, such as an earthquake, where you have the disaster and then you have the recovery from the disaster, these fires in these communities happen multiple times.…
