New Mexico residents ready to evacuate as wildfire spreads

Thousands of residents of a historic Old West town in New Mexico were yesterday told to prepare for possible evacuation as fierce winds drove the largest active US wildfire through drought-parched forests.People in the west of Las Vegas, New Mexico packed bags and kept family members close after the fire burned within 8km of their homes near interstate highway 25, according to local officials and fire authorities.Crews bulldozed firebreaks to the west and north of the city of 14,000 to protect ranches, rural houses and the United World College in the village of Montezuma, fire official Todd Abel told a briefing.The Calf Canyon fire has so far burned 104,000 acres, an area nearly the size of Albuquerque, and is the largest of a dozen southwest blazes that scientists have said are more widespread and arriving earlier this year due to climate change.“We’re just gritting our teeth, there’s going to be thousands of people affected,” said San Miguel county deputy manager Jesus Romero as ash swirled around his home in south Las Vegas.Asked if the entire city would be told to evacuate, Romero said that could happen today when winds are expected to shift and blow into the east.About 32km north, crews fought to stop the blaze from burning homes near the village of Ledoux or moving further north into the Mora valley with other communities dating to Spanish colonial times, Abel said.Burning since April 6 around 48km east of Santa Fe, the fire has destroyed more than 300 properties and forced the evacuation of dozens of villages and settlements in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.US wildfires have burned more than twice as much land this year as in the same period of 2021, and about 70% more than the 10-year average, according to the National Interagency Fire Centre.The “megafire” could still more than double in size, a fire official warned.“It’s already 104,000 acres. It could easily double in size, maybe even bigger than that,” incident commander Carl Schwope, told a briefing.The blaze grew about 50% in 24 hours as a giant column of flame collapsed on Friday night, raining embers and starting new fires.Residents of Las Vegas awoke to pieces of charred wood the size of a US quarter coins carpeting the city.Officials fear another “column collapse” at any time.“It’s a big fire and it’s all around us,” San Miguel county manager Joy Ansley said.Firefighters believe the US West faces a grim fire year, with US department of agriculture data showing 80% of the area in severe drought.Under the scenario of a two-degrees-Celsius rise in global temperatures, scientists expect US West wildfires to burn twice the area they do now by as early as mid-century.Over a third of the 2,800 firefighters now deployed in the US were on the Calf Canyon fire.