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Pastor heads home today By MARK FREEMAN Jay Dee and Andrea Conrad packed their photo albums, financial records and floppy disks into boxes Wednesday to join the fire-fleeing caravan out Los Alamos, N.M., never expecting to see their home or church again. "The flames were close and moving right down the canyon toward us," said Jay Dee Conrad, a former Medford pastor. "We left thinking, well, this may be it." But the Conrads will drive back to their home and their church today, part of the migration back home as Los Alamos tries to rise from the ashes. The fire, which started May 4 as a brush-clearing burn gone haywire at the nearby Bandelier National Monument, spared the Conrads' possessions and their church. Beginning today, the former pastor at Medford's First Presbyterian Church and his wife will eschew their refugee status and start helping their town rebuild through their 700-member United Church of Los Alamos. "The infrastructure you depend upon in a town is still there," Andrea Conrad said. "It will be easier to rebuild the town that way. "And the church will be there," she said. "That will be a big help for our people." Jay Dee Conrad, 61, and Andrea Conrad, 59, moved to Los Alamos in 1993 after 18 years in Medford. Their home, a 2,000-square-foot house owned by their church, sits next to their church in the core area of 11,000-resident Los Alamos. The couple had about an hour Wednesday to pack up the belongings they wanted spared from fire and flee Los Alamos as flames danced toward town. They threw their photos and floppy disks, along with some of church's hard-to-replace records, into their two Toyotas and joined the evacuation. "It sounded at the time like (the fire) was going to take the whole town out," Andrea Conrad said. "At that point, we expected to lose everything. But the Conrads and their neighbors kept surprisingly cool amid the chaos. "As we were getting out, it was the middle of the day but it was dark, and there were large ash balls," she said. "It was very orderly. No one pushed. No one cut in line." They first fled to a friend's home in nearby White Rock, but were rousted early Thursday as that town, too, was evacuated. They have spent the past five nights in a motel in Santa Fe, about 45 minutes from Los Alamos. More than 260 homes, including the homes of seven of the Conrads' church members, were destroyed in the fire. When they return, the Conrads expect to battle smoke damage and will help turn their church into a relief center for those less fortunate. Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA