Cooler weather is helping nearly 3,000 firefighters in New Mexico prevent the nation’s largest active wildfire from growing.
FILE - This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows the active fire lines of the Hermits Peak wildfire, in Las Vegas, N.M., May 11, 2022. More than 5,000 firefighters are battling multiple wildland blazes in dry, windy weather across the Southwest. Evacuation orders remained in place Thursday, May 19, 2022, for residents near fires in Texas, Colorado and New Mexico.
“Just because we’ve had a few good days of weather ... it doesn’t mean we are out of the woods yet,” San Miguel County Sheriff Chris Lopez said Monday night. Along with cooler temperatures, fire crews were helped over the weekend by water-dropping helicopters and aircraft. Rising humidity was expected to help add moisture to the bone-dry fuels on forest floors for a few more days, forecasters said.
About one-fifth of the area experienced high-severity burning that can lead to heavy and even dangerous erosion. Trees in those areas will take many years to recover without planting.The fire is among five active large fires in the state and among 14 nationally, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
Fire crews continued to make progress toward cordoning off a wildfire on the outskirts of a U.S. national security research station at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
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