Bill Morse, a spokesman for the incident management team overseeing the arduous fight against the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, summarized Wednesday’s battle: “Day 35: Another hellish day on this fire.”
Like an invading army, the wildfire continued its relentless push to the north, spurred by howling winds and the heavy fuels in its path, defying the 1,863 personnel deployed to fight it.
“Currently, there’s nothing we can do about the fire, how fast it’s moving,” said Todd Abel, the team’s operations section chief, in an evening briefing.
The mammoth blaze on the eastern side of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which formed when two smaller fires merged last month, had scorched nearly 237,000 acres by Wednesday morning, covering more than 370 square miles. It grew more than 50 square miles in just a day, taking a surprising jump toward Taos and Colfax counties Tuesday, and continued to spread Wednesday; though, no new estimates of its size were available late in the day.
One arm of the blaze edged around the community of Chacon to the west but sent embers flying east, raising concerns of new blazes, officials said, and another arm reached up to Guadalupita North, which lies below Black Lake and Angel Fire, forcing additional evacuations and more communities on “ready” and “set” status — meaning they must be prepared to leave.
Among the areas ordered to evacuate was Ocate, evacuated last month due to the now-contained, 59,000-acre Cook’s Peak Fire.
The Sipapu Ski and Summer Resort, which has been hosting evacuees, was put on “set” status.
In preparation for the approaching threat, the Angel Fire and Sipapu ski resorts have deployed snow-making equipment to mitigate fire risk around their facilities.
“We’ve been preparing for wildfire for years and years; it’s our routine,” John Paul Bradley, Sipapu’s general manager, told The Taos News.
But, he said of the fire mitigation technique, “This will be a first for us; [Ski] Santa Fe did it about 10 years ago.”
Mike De Fries, another spokesman for the incident management team, said there are elements — intense gusts, low humidity, large amounts of dry trees and debris — that make the fire “high energy” and extremely difficult to predict, so fire officials aren’t inclined to speculate on when and where it might be vanquished.
“I don’t know that we would say how far we think it could go,” De Fries said. “We obviously know the potential for this fire to keep burning for a long amount of time.”
High winds not only prevent aircraft from dropping water and retardant on the fire, they whip up the flames, preventing ground crews from moving closer to more tightly contain it, De Fries said.
This fire is colossal and complex, he said. “We look for opportunities where we think we can slow the fire and potentially take it on,” he added.
The Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire could end up being the largest fire in the state’s history.
The Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fire in the Gila Mountains in 2012 now holds the record at 297,845 acres. It surpassed the Las Conchas Fire in the Jemez Mountains a year earlier, which burned over 150,000 acres.
The Cerro Pelado Fire in the Jemez Mountains — at more than 43,000 acres Wednesday — is largely consuming fuels left in the Las Conchas burn scar. The stubborn blaze remains just 11 percent contained, even as the number of personnel fighting it has swelled to over 1,000.
Fire managers for both blazes were concerned earlier this week about forecasts calling for a lightning storm that could spark new fires in the drought-parched region. But the storm moved east and was near the Texas border Wednesday afternoon, said Alyssa Clements, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Albuquerque.
Even as new evacuation orders were called, residents of several communities affected by the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire were allowed to return to their homes this week — though many have found only charred remains.
A fire ignited Wednesday across the road from Pendaries Village, one of the neighborhoods being repopulated. The upscale resort community near Rociada lost a lodge, restaurant and conference center in the wildfire, as well as an undetermined number of homes.
Paul Aragon, Pendaries’ general manager, emailed a message informing residents of the new fire.
“I am not aware of any evacuation orders however please take all precautions if you are in Pendaries,” Aragon wrote.
The fire was near the village’s entrance, the main evacuation route, he added, noting there was another road residents could use to leave, at the top of a skyline.
Aragon couldn’t be reached to comment on how serious the new fire was or whether it had been extinguished.
Les Montoya, general manager of the Mora-San Miguel Electric Cooperative, said in an evening briefing dangerous conditions had forced the co-op to take power offline in Pendaries Village.
The co-op has been working to help in the repopulation effort by ensuring neighborhoods have access to power, Montoya said, but damaged infrastructure has created a “sporadic” electric system.
Crews have not been authorized to enter some areas, such as Mineral Hill, and others — such as Gallinas — have dozens of downed poles and require an extensive rebuild before service is available to residents, he said.
“Outages will continue to occur,” he added, largely due to high winds.
At Sipapu, staffer Amy Gaskins told The Taos News two-thirds of the apartments and cabins had been filled with evacuees until Tuesday, when the resort was put on a “set” evacuation status, meaning guests were instructed to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Many of them didn’t wait to hear the order to “go.”
“We’ve had evacuees here for three weeks,” said Gaskins, who was packing her vehicle Tuesday evening to prepare for an evacuation. “People have been bringing supplies, contributing funds to help with accommodations, and we cut rates.”
Bradley, the general manager, said the resort was doing everything possible to accommodate evacuees from Mora County, who “are our neighbors, our employees, our fellow New Mexicans. I feel bad for these people who lost their homes, especially for those who don’t have insurance.”
Sipapu offered rooms on a sliding scale that equals “about a 90 percent discount,” he said.
Some employees put concerted effort into clearing deadfall, brush and other fuels from the Carson National Forest land on which the resort operates, Bradley added.
Zach Behrens, a spokesman for the Carson National Forest, confirmed Wednesday the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire had crossed from the Santa Fe National Forest into the “very southeast edge” of the Carson, and said the Camino Real Ranger District was set to close to the public beginning Thursday — when stiff winds and heavy gusts were expected to continue.
Dave Bales, the incident commander, said he has ordered a second Type 1 team to help get ahead of the blaze as it marches farther north. Officials, he said, are “really trying to wrap our heads around ‘Where can we be successful at stopping this fire?’ ”
Abel, the operations section chief, added: “We’ve got more and more resources showing up on scene every day.”
Geoffrey Plant of The Taos News contributed to this report.