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LAS VEGAS, New Mexico – Strong winds continued through Sunday’s day, helping to spread New Mexico’s second-largest wildfire beyond small agricultural communities in the state’s mountain valleys as crews expect many more days of heavy conditions.
The Calf Canyon fire continued to move south and east on Sunday and is expected to push this direction through the night as winds remain strong throughout the night. It has also spread north, establishing on the other side of the highway, which firefighters had hoped to use as a boundary line.
Although no casualties were reported, the fire destroyed at least 276 structures and led to the evacuation of nearly 13,000 residences.
Here, in a city of more than 13,000 people, about 120 miles northeast of Albuquerque, residents have united in the face of insecurity.
At a former high school that now serves as a shelter, Jana Lopez distributed plates of pasta, breasts and pork on Saturday night.
Lopez, who was evacuated from her Las Vegas home about a week ago and now stays with her cousin, comes to the shelter to serve other evacuees every day. It was the feeling of helplessness that made her do something for the people whose lives were turned upside down by the fires.
“I cried at home, saying, ‘What can I do?'” Lopez said. “And then it evolves – we can cook.”
So she and her family prepared a whole new Mexican dish of pozol, enchilada and red chili to take to one of the evacuation shelters. She then joined World Central Kitchen’s non-profit efforts to provide food.
She still remembers the burning trees as she packed documents and snatched photos of her 8-year-old daughter from the walls for the two hours she had to pack.
“There are only a lot of worries here – when can we go home?” I can are we going home? ”Lopez said.
The wind was so strong that it rocked the treetops and street signs as they sprinkled the city with bits of white and black ash. The air was filled with the smell of burning wood, the sky was covered with a gray mist.
As night fell, orange flames outlined the steep slopes and pillars of light formed where the trees were lit.
“Strong winds were the biggest factor against us,” Michael Montoya, a member of the Las Vegas City Council, told The Washington Post on Saturday. “No end in sight.”
Todd Abel, chief of operations at the Southwest Incident Management Team, said Sunday morning that air teams were working to contain the blaze. But the force of the winds has hampered many plans and planes, according to U.S. Forest Service officials.
Winds of 30 to 40 mph, with gusts of up to 60 mph, were “incredible” and “precedent conditions”, Abel said, adding that they were expected to continue until Monday.
The fire, which is more than a month old, has already burned 176,273 acres and is 43 percent under control, said Mike De Vries, an information officer at the Southwest Coordination Center. interdepartmental group that organizes response to forest fires. In late April, it merged with the Fire on a hermit’s peak to the east, a prescribed burn, over which fire crews lost control in strong winds. The cause of the fire in Calf Canyon is being investigated.
Crew of 1685 people personnel and a large aircraft fleet – including four water pumps and 12 helicopters – are working frantically to fight the raging fire, which has a perimeter that stretches for about 300 miles.
“We are currently in this multi-day event with the wind and have our resources to set fire to areas where it is most aggressive in pushing the actual perimeter of the fire or threatening communities,” De Vries told The Post. on Sunday.
“The fire is definitely pushing to grow and we are just trying to protect communities and limit growth,” he added.
Winds have pushed fires into rural communities north of Las Vegas, De Vries said, with more evacuation signals issued Sunday afternoon. In Las Vegas, the most densely populated area near the fire, some evacuation orders have been revoked as restrictive efforts have reduced threats to the city.
But with strong winds creating chaotic fire behavior that is expected to last several days, many people who have been out of their homes for weeks may be asked to continue to do so for days.
Strong winds, overlapping with dry air, low humidity and above-average temperatures, created what the National Weather Service described as “hazardous conditions” on Sunday. Authorities warned that these conditions in the box could lead to the rapid spread of forest fires and new fires throughout the day on Sunday and in the following days.
On Sunday, Dave Bales, incident commander in the Southwest Incident Management Team, described Sunday’s weather as “unheard of in this part of the world”, with winds expected to blow uninterrupted this week.
“With winds of 50 miles per hour and more, this fire is moving fast,” Bales said Sunday night. “It comes and goes fast.”
Most of the evacuation and emergency operations were coordinated by Las Vegas. About 3,000 more homes the Las Vegas area can be told to evacuate. Officials have already emptied psychiatric hospital, prison and boarding school of United World College in the city.
Evacuation signals began Sunday in the third district, Taos, at the northwest end of the fire. Firefighters emphasize that it is time for people who have remained in evacuation areas to leave before the smoke or fire makes it impossible.
On Saturday night, San Miguel County Sheriff Chris Lopez warned residents to evacuate “before it’s too late” and urged people to prepare for the worst given the expected dangerous conditions.
“It’s hard to predict exactly what will happen, but it’s not good,” Lopez said.
Located in the higher ground east of Santa Fe in the counties of Mora and San Miguel, in northern New Mexico, the Calf Canyon fire is among six major fires burning in New Mexico.
So far this year, the fires have burned more than 270,000 acres, and the fire season is just entering its peak period. Residents of Los Alamos were also warned on Sunday of possible evacuations earlier this week as a fire in Cerro Pelado west of Santa Fe intensified in strong winds.
“We can’t make it clearer than that – if you’re in a mandatory evacuation zone, you have to leave NOW,” tweeted Governor Michel Lujan Grisham (D) on Saturday night. “Tonight we will enter an extremely dangerous period of extreme fires. As strong winds intensify, conditions may worsen and air support may be limited.
On Sunday night, she tweeted that several communities in Mora County were under emergency evacuation.
Vilegas reported from Washington.
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