Millisecond crystal relaxation has been used to explain anomalous decay in
doped alkali halides. We attribute this slowness to Fermi-Pasta-Ulam solitons.
Our model exhibits confinement of mechanical energy released by excitation.
Extending the model to long times is justified by its relation to solitons,
excitations previously proposed to occur in alkali halides. Soliton damping and
observation are also discussed
