“Let’s just say everything you’ve ever accumulated was all of a sudden gone in one day because someone lit a match and it wasn’t an accident,” a Mora County resident says.
A flare-up near Cleveland in Mora County, N.M., darkens the sky where firefighters battled the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon fire on May 4, 2022.Deon J. Hampton
Sanchez, 49, and his grandmother, Tommie Carter, who breathes with the aid of an oxygen device, were among nearly 100 Mora County residents, some of whom were descendants of Indigenous people who lived off the land and settlers who put down roots in northern New Mexico in the 1800s, displaced. All told, the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon fire chewed through more than 341,000 acres, torched about 62 million trees in the Santa Fe National Forest and private lands and burned down 220 structures.
Officials said the tens of millions of dead trees could topple over and potentially reburn. State forester Laura McCarthy said trees posing a hazard near roads would be cut down.The massive wildfire all but extinguished a way of life rich in traditions that had been passed down for generations in the remote Sangre de Cristo Mountains, 2,000 square miles of forestland spread across northern New Mexico.
Much of the once-abundant wildlife, such as bears, buffaloes, foxes and rabbits, which local hunters relied on for food or to sell, have fled the burned-out territory. Loggers, ranchers and farmers also saw their livelihoods go up in flames.
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