Thousands of residents have evacuated due to flames that have charred large swaths of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northeastern New Mexico.
Weather conditions described as potentially historic were on tap for New Mexico on Saturday and for the next several days as hundreds of firefighters and a fleet of airplanes and helicopters worked feverishly to bolster lines around the largest fire burning in the U.S.
“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 start of the conflagration has been traced in part to a preventive fire initiated by the U.S. Forest Service in early April to reduce flammable vegetation.
Incident Commander Dave Bales said firefighters working in northeastern New Mexico have been focused on protecting homes and other structures that hold generations of sacred memories. The crews have seen extreme wind events before that usually last a day, maybe two. 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.Another large wildfire burning in New Mexico was within 5 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.
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