Destructive Southwest fires have burned dozens of homes in northern Arizona and put small New Mexico villages in the path of flames that are expected to chew away Friday at wide swaths of tinder dry forest and grassland with the help of ferocious winds.
Firefighters working to keep more homes from burning on the edge of a mountain town in northern Arizona were helped by scattered showers and cooler temperatures early Friday, but the favorable weather was not expected to last as more gusts were forecast to batter parts of Arizona and all of New Mexico through the weekend.
“We had some rain and snow, but this wind will just dry it right back up rather rapidly,” said Dick Fleishman, a spokesman for a fire burning on the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona.
In the the Sangre de Cristo Mountains northeast of Santa Fe, neighbors spent the night helping one another pack belongings and load their horses and other animals into trailers to escape approaching flames. The rural area is home to several hundred people, but many residences are unoccupied as families have yet to arrive for summer.
crews, homes, Southwest fires, firefighters,
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