{"id":40332,"date":"2022-05-30T14:48:19","date_gmt":"2022-05-30T20:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/crews-make-gains-against-new-mexico-wildfire-largest-in-u-s\/"},"modified":"2022-05-30T20:48:19","modified_gmt":"2022-05-30T20:48:19","slug":"crews-make-gains-against-new-mexico-wildfire-largest-in-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/crews-make-gains-against-new-mexico-wildfire-largest-in-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"Crews make gains against New Mexico wildfire, largest in U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The
The Hermits Peak Fire burns in Las Vegas, N.M., on May 11. (Satellite image by Maxar Technologies via AP)<\/span>onset<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Crews were making progress in stopping the nation\u2019s largest active wildfire from spreading on Monday, the fourth consecutive day of warnings of extreme fire conditions in northern New Mexico.<\/p>\n

The nearly 8-week-old fire was surrounded by containment lines cut and scraped around half of of its perimeter, enclosing 493 square miles of forested mountains and foothills east of Santa Fe.<\/p>\n

Nearly 3,000 firefighters and other personnel were assigned to the blaze, the largest in New Mexico\u2019s recorded history.<\/p>\n

Red flag warnings were issued for Saturday through Monday because of high winds and low humidity, but crews backed by bulldozers and aircraft dropping water by midday Monday were able to jump on hot spots and allow only minimal growth, officials said.<\/p>\n

With forecasts calling for improved weather conditions beginning Tuesday, fire officials said they were reducing the frequency of livestreamed evening \u201ccommunity meeting\u201d briefings from daily to three times a week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis change is a direct result of the positive progress firefighters have made in containing this fire and limiting fire growth,\u201d officials said in a statement.<\/p>\n

In another reflection of gains made to check the fire\u2019s growth, San Miguel County on Saturday lifted evacuation orders for several areas on the fire\u2019s western flank and downgraded pre-evacuation warnings in others.<\/p>\n

Thunderstorms could develop in the area during a period beginning Wednesday night and ending Friday, said incident meteorologist Bruno Rodriguez. However, \u201cwe’re not expecting widespread, wetting rain with it.”<\/p>\n

Initial estimates say the fire has destroyed at least 330 homes but state officials expect the number of homes and other structures that have burned to rise to more than 1,000 as more assessments are done.<\/p>\n

The fire started in early April as a result of prescribed burns that either got of control or smoldered for months before bursting in to flames with drier and warmer weather.<\/p>\n

Most of the large fires so far this spring have been in Arizona and New Mexico in a region where many fire managers have described forests as \u201cripe and ready to burn\u201d due to a megadrought that has spanned decades and warm and windy conditions brought on by climate change.<\/p>\n

Davenport reported from Phoenix.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hermits Peak Fire burns in Las Vegas, N.M., on May 11. (Satellite image by Maxar Technologies via AP)onset Crews were making progress in stopping the nation\u2019s largest active wildfire from spreading on Monday, the fourth consecutive day of warnings of extreme fire conditions in northern New Mexico. The nearly 8-week-old fire was surrounded by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40333,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[815,138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-40332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-associated-press-new-mexico","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40332"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=40332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}