New Mexico races to fight wildfires with more heat, wind on the way
SANTA FE — Airborne firefighters dumped tonnes of water and retardants on raging New Mexico wildfires on Saturday, expediting their mission ahead of gustier forecast winds that officials said were expected to ground much of their aerial campaign in the coming days.
In all, New Mexico was battling at least six wildfires, the worst of them burning the mountains and canyons just east of the capital of Santa Fe amid extremely hot, windy and dry weather that Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham called “the worst possible set of conditions for any fire.”
The Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon complex had burned 170,665 acres as of Saturday, officials said, the equivalent of 700 square km or nearly 90 per cent of the land area of New York City, destroying at least 170 homes and forcing 16,000 evacuations.
Worse yet, sizzling temperatures and powerful winds were forecast for another five days in what firefighters have deemed a “historic fire weather event.”
Dave Bales, U.S. Forest Service incident commander for the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire, told reporters that helicopter and airplane pilots started early on Saturday in expectation that gusty winds would pick up and ground the fleet.
Saturday's wind speeds of 50 km/h with gusts exceeding 100 km/h were expected to increase today. Meanwhile, relative humidity of 35 per cent was forecast to dip to a bone dry 18 per cent today.
“We will not be able to fly aircraft, so the next few days we won't have a lot of aviation support,” Bales told reporters.
More than 13,000 firefighters on the ground were using hand tools and bulldozers to create fire breaks.
The Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire was roughly 20 per cent contained on Saturday, but pockets of unburned forest remained behind the fire lines, meaning it had plenty more fuel.