SANTA FE NATIONAL FOREST, New Mexico – Thousands of firefighters labored to slow the advance of destructive wildfires in the Southwest as residents braced for dangerously dry, warm and windy conditions in northern New Mexico and adjacent areas that have made the blazes hard to contain.
At least 166 homes have been destroyed in one rural county in northeast New Mexico since the biggest fire burning in the US started racing through small towns east and northeast of Santa Fe on April 22, the sheriff of San Miguel County said according to AP.
Authorities on Friday morning urged people to immediately leave a string of sparsely populated canyons and forests on the fringes of the Santa Fe National Forest northwest of Las Vegas, New Mexico, where nearly 1,000 firefighters and emergency personnel were deployed.
Flames were driven forward by steady winds. A weather update from the US Forest Service described gusts as high as 66 mph (106 kph).
In a briefing for the Santa Fe National Forest, operations Chief Jayson Coil said that intelligence gathered from a plane, before winds picked up, reinforced their concerns.
“The fire is moving faster than we originally had anticipated under these conditions and we still have not reached the peak of the wind,” Coil said.
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