Wildfires merge in New Mexico, threatening northern villages

LAS VEGAS, N.M. >> Maggie Mulligan said her dogs could sense the panic while she and her husband packed them up, agonized over having to leave horses behind and fled a fast-moving wildfire barreling toward their home in northeast New Mexico.

“We don't know what's next,” she said. “We don't know if we can go back to the horses.”

Mulligan and her husband, Bill Gombas, 67, were among the anxious residents who hurriedly packed up and evacuated their homes Friday ahead of ominous Western wildfires fueled by tinder-dry conditions and ferocious winds.

Over a dozen sizable fires were burning in Arizona and New Mexico, destroying dozens of homes and as of Saturday burning more than 174 square miles.

Winds that howled Friday remained a concern on Saturday in northern New Mexico where two fires merged and quadrupled in size to a combined 66 square miles in mountains and grassland northwest of Las Vegas.

The merged fires burned some structures but no figures were available, said fire information officer Mike Johnson. “They were able to save some structures and we know we lost other structures that we weren't able to defend.”

Wind-blown clouds of dust and plumes of smoke obscured the skies near the fires, said Jesus Romero, assistant county manager for San Miguel County. “All the ugliness that spring in New Mexico brings — that's what they're dealing in.”

An estimated 500 homes in San Miguel were in rural areas of Mora and San Miguel counties covered by evacuation orders or warning notices, Romero said.

Elsewhere in the region, the fire danger in the Denver area on Friday was the highest it had been in over a decade, according to the National Weather Service, because of unseasonable temperatures in the 80s combined with strong winds and very dry conditions.

In Arizona, a Flagstaff-area fire burned 30 homes and numerous other buildings when the flames blew through rural neighborhoods Tuesday.

A shift in wind had crews working Saturday to keep the fire from moving up mountain slopes or toward homes in rural neighborhoods near areas that burned Tuesday, fire information officer Dick Fleishman said.

“It has got us a little concerned,” he said.