N.M. RESIDENTS BRACING FOR EXTREME FIRE CONDITIONS

With the worst of the thick wildfire smoke having blown out of town, residents of this small northern New Mexico city tried to recapture a sense of normalcy Saturday as their rural neighbors hunkered down amid predictions of extreme fire conditions.

Shops and restaurants reopened, the historic center was no longer just populated by firefighters, but there was a widely felt sense of anxiety, loss, and wariness of what lay ahead.

“It’s literally like living under a dark cloud,” said Liz Birmingham, whose daughter had persistent headaches from the smoke. “It’s unnerving.”

While the city for now seemed spared of danger, rural areas were still threatened as the fire was driven by winds so fierce all firefighting aircraft had to be grounded. And the worst could be yet to come.

A combination of strong winds, high temperatures and low humidity were forecast by the National Weather Service to create an “exceptionally dangerous and likely historic stretch of critical to extreme fire weather conditions” for several days.

Some 1,400 firefighters worked feverishly to contain the largest fire burning in the U.S. The blaze, now more than a month old, has blackened 172,160 acres — more than 269 square miles — an area larger than the city of Chicago.

Thousands of residents have evacuated due to flames that have charred large swaths of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northeastern New Mexico.

The fire’s main threat was now to the north, where flames burning vegetation clogging the forest floor threatened several small rural communities, fire spokesperson Ryan Berlin said.

The threat to Las Vegas, a city of 13,000, was reduced after vegetation was cleared to create containment lines. But fire officials warned residents that they should still be ready to leave and not to let their guards down because winds will pick up.

On a mountain ridgeline outside of town, a sloppy line of red retardant could be seen on the trees. Residents were praying that the line and the wall of rock would hold.