Editors Note UPDATES: Recasts, updates throughout with strong winds returning, hampering efforts to battle blaze, fresh quotes. Links additional AP Photos. With AP Photos.

By CEDAR ATTANASIO and BRIAN MELLEY
Associated Press

LAS VEGAS, N.M. (AP) _ After a few days of calm that allowed some families who had fled wildfires raging in northeast New Mexico to return to their homes, dangerous winds picked up again Sunday, threatening to spread spot fires and complicate work for firefighters.

More than 1,500 firefighters were on the fire lines at the biggest blaze east and northeast of Santa Fe, which grew another 8 square miles (20 square kilometers) overnight to an area more than twice as large as the city of Philadelphia.

A red-flag warning was in effect Sunday, kicking off what fire officials predicted would be another “historic, multi-day wind event that could result in extreme fire behavior.”

A few helicopters were able to gather new information from the air on the spread of the flames early Sunday “but they won’t be up there very long because of the winds out there,” fire spokesman Tom Abel said.

“The wind is incredible. It is precedent setting, the amount of wind we are going to have and the duration we are going to have it,” he said at a morning briefing.

“They are predicting the wind to blow all day today, through the night, all day tomorrow so that is a long time for our fire,” he said.

Thousands of residents have evacuated due to flames that have charred large swaths of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northeastern New Mexico _ a total of 275 square miles (712 square kilometers).

The good news, Abel said, is additional fire crews continue to arrive from around the West.

For many California firefighters backing up local units, the winds in New Mexico are puzzling. Unlike the sustained Santa Ana winds in southern California, the air around the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fires in New Mexico have swirled around and been redirected in complex and changing interactions with the mountains.

“We’ll see what happens,” said fire battalion chief Ryan Lewis, of Ontario, California, on a rare break with his firefighters at a local hotel that’s serving hot meals to fire workers and evacuees.

The worst of the thick wildfire smoke had blown out of some areas on Saturday, allowing residents of rural Las Vegas, New Mexico, to recapture a sense of normalcy Saturday as their rural neighbors hunkered down amid predictions of extreme fire conditions.

Shops and restaurants reopened, the historic center was no longer just populated by firefighters, but there was a widely felt sense of anxiety, loss, and wariness of what lay ahead.

“It’s literally like living under a dark cloud,” said Liz Birmingham, whose daughter had persistent headaches from the smoke. “It’s unnerving.”

Nationwide, close to 2,000 square miles (5,180 square kilometers) have burned so far this year, with 2018 being the last time this much fire had been reported at this point, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. And predictions for the rest of the spring do not bode well for the West, where long-term drought and warmer temperatures brought on by climate change have combined to worsen the threat of wildfire.

The New Mexico fire’s main threat was now to the north, where flames burning vegetation clogging the forest floor threatened several small rural communities, fire spokesman Ryan Berlin said.

The threat to Las Vegas, a city of 13,000, was reduced after vegetation was cleared to create containment lines. Local officials on Saturday allowed residents of several areas on the city’s northwestern outskirts to return to their homes, Berlin said.

The city looked like a ghost town earlier in the week, with businesses shuttered, schools closed and the tourist district empty but for resting firefighters. By Saturday, it was in a partial state of recovery.

National Guard troops carried cases of water, people lined up to sign up for relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the state’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich met with local officials and toured the shelter housing some of the displaced.

“We don’t know if our houses are getting burned, or if it’s gonna stop,” said Domingo Martinez, an evacuee from rural Manuelitas northwest of Las Vegas. “I hope it dies down so we can go home.”

Martinez, who is staying with his son on the east side of town, visited an old friend and neighbor who had been living in the middle school shelter for 15 days.

Outside the school, Martinez got a free haircut from Jessica Aragon, a local hairdresser who volunteered her time.

“I love that everyone is coming together,” Aragon said. “I think a smile is worth a thousand words.”

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Melley reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Susan Montoya Bryan, Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona, and Paul Davenport and Michelle A. Monroe in Phoenix contributed to this report.

Editors Note MAJOR UPDATE: Recasts to update throughout with more evacuations in works, fire spread exceeding expectation, no new structures lost, fresh quotes, forecasts; edits, trims previous. Links additional photos. With AP Photos. AP Video.

By MORGAN LEE AND CEDAR ATTANASIO
Associated Press

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) _ Thousands of firefighters battled destructive wildfires in the Southwest as more residents prepared to evacuate Friday into the weekend in northern New Mexico where strong winds and dangerously dry conditions have made the blazes hard to contain.

The biggest fire in the U.S. grew to more than 117 square miles (303 square kilometers) through the afternoon northeast of Santa Fe. Gusty winds prevented any aerial attacks by midmorning and crews lost some of the containment they had established in previous days.

The rapid rate of the spread of the fire was exceeding dire predictions in some areas, incident commander Carl Schwope said Friday night.

“We’re in a very dangerous situation. Evacuation statuses are changing as we speak,” he warned at a briefing in Las Vegas, New Mexico, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Santa Fe.

More air and ground forces were on the way, he said, to fortify the nearly 1,000 firefighters on the fire lines there and winds that gusted up to 65 mph were beginning to subside as nightfall approached.

There were no immediate reports of any new structures have been lost since the local sheriff confirmed Thursday night at least 166 homes have been destroyed in northeast New Mexico’s rural San Miguel County.

But erratic wind shifts in some of the driest conditions the region has seen in years were forecast again Saturday, and authorities were making preparations to evacuate some residents as far north as Taos.

“Just getting people out of the way, that’s been the mission today,” Sheriff Chris Lopez said at the briefing in Las Vegas. Some of the most active fire was heading in the direction of that town but he said the town itself was not in immediate danger.

Fire lines were bolstered outside the rural New Mexico community of Ledoux in efforts to save structures, and they appeared to be holding.

More than 2,000 firefighters were battling fires in Arizona and New Mexico on Friday _ about half of those in northeast New Mexico, where a total of more than 187 square miles (484 square kilometers) of mostly timber and brush have been charred.

Red flag warnings for extreme fire danger were in place Friday for nearly all of New Mexico and parts of Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

The fires are burning unusually hot and fast for this time of year, especially in the Southwest, where experts said some timber in the region is drier than kiln-dried wood.

“We still have some fire weather to get through tonight, tomorrow and several days afterwards,“ fire behavior specialist Stewart Turner said at Friday night’s briefing in Las Vegas, New Mexico.

“It’s very important that everybody pays attention to the evacuation orders because this is a very, very serious fire _ very dangerous fire behavior out there.”

Matthew Probst, Las Vegas-based medical director for the health clinic network El Centro Family Health, said the nearby fire has swept through impoverished communities already frayed by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Here, you’re losing meager homes, but it’s everything. It’s all they had,” said Probst, a coordinator of county health services for wildfire evacuees.

Rural families in the area were caught off guard after heading home from an early evacuation _ only to be ambushed by a fast-moving fire last week.

A 79-year-old widow from the tiny community of Sapello left her house and a blue heeler cattle dog for a doctor’s appointment, with boxes packed for possible evacuation with jewelry and her 1964 wedding photos. Winds kicked up, and police said it was too late to go back for anything.

“They said, ‘No ma’am, it’s far too dangerous,’ ” said Sonya Berg in a phone interview Friday from an emergency shelter at a nearby middle school.

A close friend says the house burned, but Berg doesn’t want to believe it. A neighbor rescued the dog.

“I’m in denial until I go and see it,” said Berg, whose husband passed away in 2019 and was buried outside the home. “He’s up there, he’s been through the whole thing. I’m hoping the gravestone we put up is still there.”

In the Jemez Mountains east of Los Alamos, another wildfire spanning 12 square miles (30 square kilometers) crept in the direction of Bandelier National Monument, which closed its backcountry hiking trails as a precaution while central visiting areas remained open.

In northern Arizona, authorities are nearing full containment of a 30 square-mile (77 square-kilometer) blaze that destroyed at least 30 homes near Flagstaff and forced hundreds to evacuate. A top-level national management team turned it back over to the local forest Friday.

“It’s pretty stable for the most part,” said Coconino National Forest spokeswoman Randi Shaffer. “We’re not seeing any forecasted crazy weather patterns. We have fire crews monitoring, all of our suppression efforts have been holding.”

Some residents near another fire 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of Prescott haven’t been allowed back home. Firefighters have about one-third of the 14 square-mile (37-square-kilometer) fire’s perimeter contained. Lighter winds were expected into the weekend, but low humidity will be a concern, fire officials said.

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Associated Press writer Scott Sonner contributed to this report from Reno, Nevada. Attanasio reported from Santa Fe. Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.