Crews try to protect more homes from raging Southwest U.S. fires

FLAGSTAFF, ARIZ. -- Destructive Southwest fires have burned dozens of homes in northern Arizona and put small New Mexico villages in the path of flames that are expected to chew away Friday at wide swaths of tinder dry forest and grassland with the help of ferocious winds.

Firefighters working to keep more homes from burning on the edge of a mountain town in northern Arizona were helped by scattered showers and cooler temperatures early Friday, but the favorable weather was not expected to last as more gusts were forecast to batter parts of Arizona and all of New Mexico through the weekend.

“We had some rain and snow, but this wind will just dry it right back up rather rapidly,” said Dick Fleishman, a spokesman for a fire burning on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona.

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In the the Sangre de Cristo Mountains northeast of Santa Fe, neighbors spent the night helping one another pack belongings and load their horses and other animals into trailers to escape approaching flames. The rural area is home to several hundred people, but many residences are unoccupied as families have yet to arrive for summer.

Lena Atencio and her husband, whose family has lived in the Rociada area for five generations, got out Friday as the winds kicked up. She said people were taking the threat seriously and there was a lot of traffic on roads overnight as people were evacuating.

“As a community, as a whole, everybody is just pulling together to support each other and just take care of the things we need to now. And then at that point, it's in God's hands,” she said as the wind howled miles away in the community of Las Vegas, where evacuees were gathering. “We just have to wait and see what happens.”

Fire managers said without air support and no crews working directly on the fire lines due to the weather, explosive growth was expected.

“It's definitely lining up to be a very dangerous situation,” San Miguel County Sheriff Chris Lopez said during a community meeting, pleading with residents to take evacuation orders seriously.

Authorities on Friday morning started evacuating other valleys northeast of the fire as officials expected it to overtake some of those areas by the end of the day. They said flames could spread as much as 13 miles (20 kilometers) in that direction. Several roads in the area were also closed.

Another fire burning in the northeastern corner of New Mexico also was forcing evacuations while residents in the town of Cimarron and the headquarters of the Philmont Scout Ranch, which is owned and operated by the Boy Scouts of America, were preparing to flee if necessary. The scout ranch attracts thousands of visitors every summer, but officials there said no scouts were on the property.

In Arizona, flames stretching 100 feet (30 meters) had raced through rural neighborhoods near Flagstaff just days earlier. It wasn't until Thursday that a break in the weather allowed helicopters to drop water on the blaze and authorities to enter the charred area to survey the damage. They found 30 homes and numerous other buildings had been destroyed, with sheriff's deputies saying more than 100 properties were affected.

That fire has burned close to 32 square miles (83 square kilometers), forced evacuations of 765 homes and destroyed at least two dozen structures since it broke out on Sunday.

Smaller spot fires threaten to run up mountainous areas overlooking those neighborhoods. If that happens, any rainfall in the area could magnify flooding.

The wind is expected to be lighter over the weekend but fire managers are concerned about wind shifts that could push the blaze back onto neighborhoods that have already burned and expand into new ones, Fleishman said.

Authorities used sirens and alarms overnight Thursday in the evacuation area to warn residents who haven't left that now's the time, said sheriff's spokesman Jon Paxton. The alarms were somewhat drowned out by the howling wind.

Wildfire has become a year-round threat in the West given changing conditions that include earlier snowmelt and rain coming later in the fall, scientist have said. The problems have been exacerbated by decades of fire suppression and poor management along with a more than 20-year megadrought that studies link to human-caused climate change.

Colorado saw one of its most destructive wildfires last winter, when flames tore through two densely populated Denver suburbs. While crews got a handle this week on two small wildfires, Gov. Jared Polis was scheduled Friday to talk about the ongoing danger and how state officials planned to deal with what was expected to be a significant fire season.

In Arizona, popular lakes and national monuments have closed - some because the wildfire moved directly over them. Wupatki National Monument is in the fire's path.

The Coconino National Forest has closed the area where the wildfire is burning but has not enacted broader fire restrictions or closures. A sign at a gate warns of potential loose debris, falling trees and branches, and flash floods.

Fire restrictions went into effect Friday at some National Park Service sites in New Mexico, including Valles Caldera National Preserve and Bandelier National Monument.

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Associated Press writers Paul Davenport in Phoenix, Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Scott Sonner in Reno, Nevada, and Colleen Slevin in Denver contributed to this report.