Potentially historic weather could strengthen fires in NM
LAS VEGAS, N.M. — Weather conditions described as potentially historic were on tap for New Mexico on Saturday and for the next several days as over 1,400 firefighters and a fleet of aircraft worked feverishly to bolster lines around the largest fire burning in the U.S.
Many families already have been left homeless and thousands of residents have evacuated due to flames that have charred large swaths of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northeastern New Mexico.
Residents on the fringes of the shifting fire front were holding out hope work done over recent days to clear brush, install sprinklers, run hose lines and use bulldozers to scrape lines will keep the fire from reaching the small city of Las Vegas and other nearby villages.
“There’s uncertainty and there’s fear about how the winds are going to affect the fire from day to day,” said Elmo Baca, chairman of the Las Vegas Community
Foundation. “Once the people are evacuated out of an area, they can’t go back, so they’re just stuck worrying.”
The recent work by fire crews to protect Las Vegas, a town of about 13,000 located some 70 miles east of Santa Fe, was “looking really good” but continued Saturday, said Todd Abel, a fire operations official. “We want to make sure this is all going to hold.”
The month-old blaze has blackened more than 267 square miles — an area larger than the city of Chicago.
The start of the blaze has been traced in part to a preventive fire initiated by the U.S. Forest Service to reduce flammable vegetation. That eventually merged with another wildfire.
Nationwide, close to 2,000 square miles have burned so far this year, with 2018 being the last time this much fire had been reported across the country, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Predictions for the rest of the spring do not bode well for the West, where longterm drought and warmer temperatures brought on by climate change are worsening the threat of wildfire.
Forested areas in southern New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado also saw an early start with blazes forcing evacuations and destroying homes last month.
Incident Commander Dave Bales said firefighters working in northeastern New Mexico have been focused on protecting homes and other structures.
“It’s hard when I see so many people displaced,” he said.
The crews have seen extreme wind events before that usually last a day. But Bales said this event could last five or more days with gusts topping 50 to 60 mph. He also warned that flames could be carried up to a mile away.
“This is an extreme wind event that is unprecedented,” Bales said.
Another large wildfire in New Mexico was within five miles of Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the nation’s key facilities for nuclear research and future production of plutonium components for nuclear weapons.