The Calf Canyon fire started last week and is combined with the Hermits Peak fire that was already burning near Las Vegas, New Mexico. By Saturday morning, Calf Canyon had burned more than 97,000 acres – a huge jump from approximately 65,800 acres it had burned the day before. The fire was contained at 32% on Saturday, according to the interdepartmental reporting website InciWeb.
The rapid spread of the flames sparked evacuation orders Friday for areas in and near San Miguel County, including Big Pine, Galinas, Lower Canyon Road, Trout Springs, Hot Springs and Eastern and Western Sapello, officials said.
Many communities in the county remained on evacuation orders on Saturday, as well as others in neighboring Mora County, according to a statement from the San Miguel County and Las Vegas Emergency Management Service.
“This emerging situation remains extremely serious and refusing to evacuate could be a fatal decision,” officials said in a statement.
New Mexico Governor Michel Lujan Grisham also called on residents to listen to evacuation orders, saying on Twitter that “buildings can be replaced, but you can’t.” The flames were pushed out by “high wind speeds” on Friday in two directions: east to Las Vegas and south through the Galinas Canyon, according to the New Mexico Fire Information website. “We watched the fire march for a mile, about an hour, every hour,” said Jason Cole, chief of operations for the Southwest Incident Management Team, during a briefing Saturday.
The Hot Springs area began evacuating on Friday afternoon as the flames approached, Coyle said. The Mineral Hill area began evacuating around midnight, Coil said, after the southernmost part of the fire passed past previous containment lines.
The fire was about three-quarters of a mile from the nearest Mineral Hill home during Saturday’s briefing, Coyle said.
On the east side of the fire on Saturday, there was a new threat to areas including Las Tusas, Manuelitas and the Sapello area, Koil added.
And fire conditions are expected to worsen. While the northern part of the state was expected to break away from strong winds on Saturday, stronger winds were expected to return on Sunday along with “more critical weather conditions for the fire,” the Albuquerque National Weather Service said.
More than 1,000 people have been battling the Calf and Hermites Peak fires, and officials are investigating what may have caused the blaze.
A little further north, the Cooks Peak fire, which began about two weeks ago, is still burning.
The fire burned more than 56,000 acres and was controlled by 56% on Saturday morning, according to the website with information about the fires. The fires are part of a series of devastating fires that have engulfed parts of the state in recent weeks. The state has seen forest fires burn more acres this year – more than 173,000 – than in seven of the last eight years, according to statistics from the Southwest Coordination Center.
And it could get worse. The peak of the fire season in New Mexico is only in June, and the months that usually have the highest number of fires are June, May, July and April, respectively.
CNN’s Monica Garrett contributed to this report.
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