New Mexico struggles against raging wildfires amid evacuations

Amna Nawaz:

There's been an unusually early start to fire season this year, with blazes already burning for weeks in the Southwest, mainly in Arizona and New Mexico.

The nation's largest wildfire continues to rage in New Mexico near Santa Fe. It has burned nearly 260,000 acres, and there is no end in sight.

On the ground, Stephanie Sy reports on the toll the massive blaze is taking on both the land and its people.

Stephanie Sy:

For more than a month, the winds have blown and the flames have lit up the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Northeastern New Mexico, consuming an area larger than New York City.

Those winds, gusting more than 50 miles per hour, threatened this week to push the fire to communities closer to the city of Taos, putting more communities on notice to evacuate.

Jonathan Sanchez, Evacuee:

If they evacuate us from here, we don't know where were going to go.

Stephanie Sy:

Yesterday, in the nearby village of Eagle's Nest, residents at this Econo Lodge, who had already fled their homes days or even weeks before in Mora, were trying to decide what to do next.

Hailey Johnson, Evacuee:

There is a rumor going around that the house has burned. And so some people have said that they saw it burning. And so it very well could be gone at this point.

Jonathan Sanchez:

We don't know what to do. They're evacuating us from here. And we don't know if we're going to go to Albuquerque, Colorado, or wherever the hell were going to go.

Wil Vigil, Evacuee:

They told us three days here, but that fire over there is what's controlling everything.

Stephanie Sy:

The blaze, now approaching the size of the largest wildfire in New Mexico's recorded history, has grown at a terrifying clip. After more than a month and with more than 1,800 firefighting personnel from states across the country, the wildfire is less than 30 percent contained.

Ryan Berlin, Fire Spokesman, Incident Management Team:

In my 25 years of experience, I have never seen a fire grow like this in early May, late April, especially in New Mexico.

Stephanie Sy:

Ryan Berlin is a fire spokesman for the incident management team. A confluence of climate change, weather, and human decisions appear to have caused the blaze.

Ryan Berlin:

The fire loves the wind and loves the topography. And we have had a lot of low relative humidity here too. So, when this all lines up, it's just allowing for the rapid fire growth.

Stephanie Sy:

In addition to that low humidity, higher than average temperatures, and a series of days of gusting winds have blown the embers and sparked new fires.

Meanwhile, those winds have also kept firefighting aircraft grounded for days. Closer to the southern end of the massive wildfire, another evacuation center been set up at a middle school in the city of Las Vegas, population 13,000; 63-year-old Andrew Vigil has been volunteering here, helping evacuees like this eighth-generation new Mexican carry food for his grandkids to the car.

He's doing so with a sprained foot and a heavy heart. A few weeks ago, the Calf Canyon Fire blew a column of smoke within sight of his home, the home he'd built with his own hands and lived in for eight years.

Andrew Vigial, Evacuee:

I told my wife, you better get in your car, and because I hear the wind, but I hear something like a torch behind it.

So I jumped on my PT Cruiser, got the dog, and we were out of there, barely. We made it. Thank God we're alive.

Stephanie Sy:

But the house didn't make it, nor did his new truck, or the Winnebago he'd used as his man cave, nor did almost anything else Andrew Vigil possessed.

Andrew Vigial:

I lost everything. And it's not fair. We were so happy there, me and my wife.

Stephanie Sy:

Speaking to evacuees, an undercurrent of anger runs as word spreads that the wildfire was at least in part caused by a prescribed burn. That's the practice of using controlled burns to thin out the forest and reduce wildfire fuel. The U.S. Forest Service lit a prescribed burn in early April.

That fire merged with another wildfire, becoming the conflagration now threatening a way of life for new Mexicans.

Wil Vigil:

Somebody just made a bad decision. I think somebody's got to pay for this.

Stephanie Sy:

In a statement to the "NewsHour," the Forest Service defended the use of prescribed burns, but said: "An unpredicted in winds caused multiple spot fires that spread outside the project boundary."

An investigation is under way.

Michael Montoya, Las Vegas, New Mexico, City Council Member:

Around here, everybody knows that you don't light a match in March or April. Those are the windiest months of the year every year.

Stephanie Sy:

Michael Montoya is a Las Vegas City Council member. Like many locals, his family hails from the early Spanish and Mexican settlers who lived in the mountains here since well before the founding of America.

His own family ranch is within a mile of the eastern flank of the fire.

Michael Montoya:

Around here, in the northern part of the state, is — we maintain the land, and we maintain it, and we leave it better than when we found it.

So, that's really hard for a lot of us, people that are losing their properties.

Stephanie Sy:

And, for many, those properties were nearly all they had in this poor region of a poor state.

Donations have poured in to the evacuation center in Las Vegas, where Janna Lopez, an evacuee herself, has been coordinating free meal service with the World Central Kitchen.

Janna Lopez, Evacuee:

This community has been through so much sorrow, so much devastation.

A lot of our people can't afford house insurance. It's pay your medical bills or pay to keep the lights on, so they don't have insurance, including myself. I didn't have home insurance. So, it's just amazing the way that the services have come together.

Stephanie Sy:

Food is plentiful, shelter is available, and a helping hand, even from those who themselves have lost everything, is never far away.

The hardship is far from over. While the winds are expected to die down this weekend, fire officials say they may not be able to fully contain the blaze until July.

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy in Las Vegas, New Mexico.