Biden declares disaster in wildfire zone
LAS VEGAS: Firefighters slowed the advance of the largest wildfire in the US as heavy winds relented on Wednesday, while President Joe Biden approved a disaster declaration that brings new financial resources to remote stretches of New Mexico devastated by fire since early April.
US Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez announced the presidential disaster declaration during an evening briefing by the US Forest Service about efforts to contain the sprawling wildfire in northeastern New Mexico.
It has fanned out across 258 669 square kilometres of high alpine forest and grasslands at the southern tip of the Rocky Mountains.
“It will help us do that rebuilding and it will help us with the expenses and the hardship that people are facing right now,” the congresswoman said.
“We’re glad it happened this quickly.” Fire bosses are seizing upon an interlude of relatively calm and cool weather to prevent the fire from pushing any closer to the small New Mexico city of Las Vegas and other villages scattered along the fire’s shiting fronts. Airplanes and helicopters dropped slurries of red fire retardant from the sky, as ground crews cleared timber and brush to starve the fire along crucial fronts.
Bulldozers for days scraped fire lines on the outskirts of Las Vegas, population 13,000, while crews have conducted controlled burning to clear adjacent vegetation to prevent it from igniting.
Aircrat dropped more fire retardant as a second line of defense along a ridge just west of Las Vegas in preparation for intense winds expected over the weekend.
Strong winds with gusts up to 72kph are expected to return on Saturday aternoon along with above-normal temperatures and “abysmally low” humidity that make for extreme fire danger, said Todd Shoemake, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Albuquerque. “Sunday and Monday are probably looking to be even worse.”
Nearly 1,300 firefighters and other personnel were assigned to the fire.
Mandatory evacuation orders have been issued for an estimated 15,500 homes in outlying areas and in the valleys of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that border Las Vegas.
The tally of homes destroyed by the fire stands around 170 but could grow higher because officials have not been able to conduct assessment in all of the burn zones.
Biden’s disaster declaration releases emergency funds to recovery efforts in three counties in northeastern New Mexico where fires are still raging and for southern New Mexico areas where wind-driven blazes killed two people and destroyed over 200 homes in mid-april.