AUTHORCharles R. Mansfield, Ph.D. Dr. Mansfield grew up in the mountain west. His father was a career US Forest Service officer. During his formative years, Dr. Mansfield lived at Bear Valley Ranger Station in the Malheur National Forest in northeastern Oregon. He received his first training in forest fire control at the age of 7 when his father took him to two small forest fires. His father showed him some of the techniques for fighting forest fires. In 1948, his father was transferred to the Siskiyou National Forest, headquartered at Grants Pass, Oregon. While attending college, Dr. Mansfield spent two summers working in forest engineering doing preliminary road surveys. He then became a Smokejumper and spent 11 seasons fighting forest fires. He parachuted to 63 forest fires and traveled to 10 other fires on the ground. His fire experience ranged from small fires, only a few feet across, to major project fires that ranged up to 25,000 acres.
Dr. Mansfield and his family moved to Los Alamos in 1973. He worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 976 to 1993. Since his retirement in 1993 from the University of California, he has continued his work in high technology research and development. Dr. Mansfield is an avid outdoors man and pilot. He has hunted extensively in the area of the Cerro Grande fire from the Bandelier National Monument boundary to Pajarito Mountain. He is intensely familiar with the terrain, ground cover and forest that existed in this area before the Cerro Grande fire. | 