Wildfires grow as fierce winds batter the US Southwest
Destructive Southwest fires have burned dozens of homes in northern Arizona and put numerous small villages in New Mexico in the path of danger, as windfueled flames chewed up wide swaths of tinder dry forest and grassland and towering plumes of smoke filled the sky.
Firefighters working to keep more homes from burning on the edge of a mountain town in northern Arizona were helped by scattered showers and cooler temperatures early Friday, but the favorable weather did not last and more gusts were expected to batter parts of Arizona and all of New Mexico through the weekend.
Firefighters were assigned to more than a dozen large fires across the U.S., according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Six blazes were in New Mexico and three were in Arizona, but that didn't include the many new starts that were reported Friday as conditions deteriorated.
The wind howled across New Mexico on Friday, shrouding the Rio Grande Valley with a blanket of dust and pushing flames through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the north. Fire officials expected one blaze burning northeast of Santa Fe to overrun several communities by the end of the day.
“With the dry conditions, high temperatures, extreme winds and limited suppression ability, the fire is traveling very quickly and it is imperative that residents comply with evacuation orders,” authorities said in a warning issued Friday afternoon.
Neighbors spent the night helping one another pack belongings and load their horses and other animals into trailers to escape approaching flames. The rural area is home to several hundred people, but many residences are unoccupied as families have yet to arrive for summer.
Lena Atencio and her husband, whose family has lived in the Rociada area for five generations, got out Friday as the winds kicked up. She said people were taking the threat seriously.
“As a community, as a whole, everybody is just pulling together to support each other and just take care of the things we need to now. And then at that point, it's in God's hands,” she said as the wind howled miles away in the community of Las Vegas, where evacuees were gathering. “We just have to wait and see what happens.”
The predictions of fire managers were coming true: With no air support or crews working directly on the fire lines, there was explosive growth. Gusts of 55-65 mph (88-104 kph) are being recorded.
San Miguel County Sheriff Chris Lopez called it a very dangerous situation. Evacuation centers had been set up and several roads were closed.
Another wind-whipped fire burning in the northeastern corner of New Mexico also was forcing evacuations while residents in the town of Cimarron and the headquarters of the Philmont Scout Ranch, which is owned and operated by the Boy Scouts of America, were preparing to flee if necessary. The scout ranch attracts thousands of visitors every summer, but officials there said no scouts were on the property.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed emergency declarations for four counties affected by the fires.
In Arizona, flames had raced through rural neighborhoods near Flagstaff just days earlier. It wasn't until Thursday that a break in the weather allowed helicopters to drop water on the blaze and authorities to enter the charred area to survey the damage. They found 30 homes and numerous other buildings had been destroyed, with sheriff's deputies saying more than 100 properties were affected.
That fire has burned close to 32 square miles (83 square kilometers) and forced evacuations of 765 homes after starting last Sunday.