Arizona wildfire near biggest in state history

Associated Press

LUNA, N.M.

An enormous wildfire in eastern Arizona is poised to become the largest in state history, as firefighters tried Tuesday to keep the blaze from crossing into New Mexico and devouring a small mountain town.

Fires also grew elsewhere in New Mexico and at the state’s border with Colorado, where flames forced the closure of an interstate highway.

In Luna, N.M., evacuation plans are in place for the roughly 200 residents. Crews have been working to protect the town for days, hacking down brush, using chain saws to cut trees and setting small fires to burn anything that the approaching flames could use as fuel.

“That’s what’s saved the town,” fire incident command spokesman Sean Johnson said. “The line is holding.”

Fires have devoured hundreds of square miles in the Southwest and Texas since the wildfire season began several weeks ago. Scant winter precipitation in Arizona, New Mexico, part of west Texas and southern Colorado is blamed on La Ni ±a, a term describing cooler waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean that keep the jet stream from dipping down and bringing storms to the region.

Those storms instead dropped their rain and snow farther north, which has led to huge snowpack in the Sierra Nevada range in California and in the Rockies.

The wildfire outlook issued by the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, calls for above normal fire potential in those areas through September but lower than normal or normal across the rest of the West.

The huge blaze in Arizona also was made worse by the extremely thick forest, the result of a century of fire suppression that has let more trees grow in the world’s largest ponderosa pine forest.

Fires that once scorched only the grasses and small trees on the forest floor now reach into the tree crowns and skip across miles of terrain, destroying millions of trees. Forests across the West have similar problems.

The Arizona fire has burned more than 733 square miles since Memorial Day weekend and destroyed 32 homes and four rental cabins.

A small fraction of the fire was in New Mexico, but enough additional territory in Arizona was certain to be consumed in coming days for it to become the largest in state history. It was just 18 percent contained.