On Sunday, firefighters in New Mexico pleaded with inhabitants of a mountain community to leave before the country’s largest active wildfire raced up a valley that is their only exit.
Many have refused to go, citing the need to protect centuries-old homes and ranches in Chacon, a town of roughly 200 people located 45 miles (72 kilometres) northeast of Santa Fe.
As the fire raged 8 miles (13 kilometres) away, firemen and police told residents that they would be unable to see or breathe once the blaze reached them.
‘It’s coming rapidly,’ incident commander Dave Bales said during a press conference, adding that many residents remained in Chacon and another vulnerable community, Guadalupita.
About 12,000 homes in northern New Mexico have been ordered to evacuate due to the state’s second-largest wildfire, which started when a planned burn by the US Forest Service (USFS) burned out of control on April 6.
‘With winds like this, this fire might burn another 50,000 acres,’ William Sandoval, a resident of Chacon, said from an evacuation camp in Peasco.
According to forest researcher Joshua Sloan of New Mexico Highlands University, the fire is spreading across a densely forested area after a century of USFS policy to put out fires within hours and court-ordered logging bans since the mid-1990s.
According to research on tree rings in the neighbouring Jemez Mountains, climate change has diminished snowpacks, leaving the area parched by the greatest drought in at least five centuries.
The Hermits Peak Calf Canyon fire, which is 21 percent contained, has burned 176,273 acres (71,335 hectares), an area nearly the size of all five boroughs of New York City.
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