New Mexico wildfire prompts call for US disaster declaration

LAS VEGAS, N.M. — The governor of New Mexico on Tuesday asked President Joe Biden to declare a disaster as firefighters scrambled to clear brush, build fire lines and spray water to keep the largest blaze burning in the U.S. from destroying more homes in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a request for a presidential disaster declaration that will be sent to the White House in hopes of freeing up financial assistance for recovery efforts. She said it was important that the declaration be made now.

“I’m unwilling to wait,” said Lujan Grisham, a firstterm Democrat who is running for reelection. “I have 6,000 people evacuated, I have families who don’t know what the next day looks like, I have families who are trying to navigate their children and health care resources, figure out their livelihoods and they’re in every single little community and it must feel to them like they are out there on their own.”

A battery of fire engines and their crews were busy Tuesday working to protect homes and other structures on the edge of Las Vegas, about 70 miles east of Santa Fe, while bulldozers cleared more fire lines on the outskirts. Air tanker and helicopter pilots took advantage of a break in the thick smoke and falling ash during the early hours to battle the flames from above with fire retardant and water drops.

Authorities in northeastern New Mexico said the flames were a couple miles from Las Vegas, which serves as an economic hub for most of northeastern New Mexico.

The blaze has charred 228 square miles of mountainsides, ponderosa pines and meadows, destroying around 170 homes in its path and forcing the evacuation of the state’s psychiatric hospital in Las Vegas. Schools in the community also canceled classes at least through Wednesday.

The governor said during the briefing that the number of homes destroyed would likely go much higher given the ground that the fire has covered and the villages that it moved through over the past week. Assessments by law enforcement were ongoing.

NY lieutenant governor: U.S. Rep. Antonio Delgado will serve as New York’s next lieutenant governor, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Tuesday.

Delgado, a Democrat, will take on the largely ceremonial role previously formerly held by Brian Benjamin, who resigned following his arrest on federal corruption charges he denies.

Hochul touted fellow Delgado’s work in Congress on bills to help veterans, small business and those with student loan debt.

Delgado, a Rhodes scholar who briefly pursued a rap career after earning a Harvard law degree, had campaigned on universal access to Medicare, creating good jobs and eliminating tax loopholes for the rich. Body in barrel: The body found inside a barrel on the newly exposed bottom of Lake Mead after the lake’s level was depleted amid drought is that of a man who was shot, police said Tuesday.

The killing probably happened between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s because the victim was wearing shoes that were manufactured during that period, said homicide Lt. Ray Spencer, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

The barrel was found Sunday in the Lake Mead

National Recreational Area by boaters who informed authorities.

Drought has dropped the water level of Lake Mead on the Colorado River in southern Nevada and northern Arizona so low that Las Vegas’ uppermost water intake became visible last week.

Migrant camp relocation: Mexican authorities said Tuesday they have relocated a migrant camp that sprung up in a park in the border city of Reynosa, moving about 2,000 people to a shelter in the city, across the border from McAllen, Texas.

The camp of migrants mainly from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti sprung up after U.S. officials. citing the COVID19 pandemic, invoked a health rule that denies migrants a chance to seek asylum.

Mexico’s National Immigration Institute said the migrants were taken before midnight Monday to the shelter, which it said will have better hygiene and food services.

China building collapse: Rescuers have found two more survivors in the rubble of a building in central China that collapsed last week, state media reported Tuesday.

The official Xinhua News Agency said a man and a woman were pulled out Monday afternoon and early Tuesday.

The woman, whose rescue came after being buried for 88 hours, alerted workers using life detection equipment to her presence by knocking on objects.

The collapse of the six-story building took place Friday afternoon in Changsha, the Hunan provincial capital south of Beijing.

Police have arrested nine people, including the building owner, on suspicion of ignoring building codes or committing other violations.