Fire Season is Here

This photo I took from our backyard.(Click for larger view) For the past week local, New Mexico and out-of-state firefghters have been battling a blaze about 25 miles south of us, called the 'Trigo Fire'. Yesterday the firefighters thought they had the fire under control and many left the scene to go fight other fires, while local firemen stayed to tie up loose ends.

Well, the winds have been horrible today (and since we're discussing it now...the winds have been pretty awful since October of last year) with 60+ mph gusts.
All this wind caused serious trouble for the Trigo Fire and stirred up some embers which caused this new fire to blaze out of control and jump the previous fire lines.

Helicopters can't help because of the extreme winds and the fire is still out of control and heading in a northwest direction. (Have I mentioned that our home lies in that direction, too?)
Photo taken from our barn.
I took this photo standing at the barn, in Baby Doll's pasture. Jenna and Baby Doll are walking towards me from my neighbor, Valerie's horse barn. You can see the smoke from the fire in the distance.
This is a photo taken looking east into our valley. You can see the smoke blowing across the tops of the mountains in the distance.
For more news on this story from our local TV station, click here(or read below):
Trigo Fire

I took this photo just before it got dark, looking south. One of our neighbor's houses is below that ridge.
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TORREÓN, N. M. (KRQE) - High winds are fueling new fears in the Manzano Mountains tonight after the nearly contained Trigo Fire exploded this afternoon driving residents from their homes.

"The winds are just cranking," a U. S. Forest Service official said late this evening.

Rescue workers have evacuated as many as 250 homes as firefighters scramble to get hold of the now out-of-control blaze. One evacuated resident said she saw neighbor's home burning as she, her husband and dogs fled the area.

Police, fire bosses and emergency services have set up a command center at the intersection of State Roads 55 and 337 about four miles west of Torreón. SR 55 into Torreón has been closed.

The American Red Cross opened an evacuation shelter at the Estancia Community Center on Williams Avenue in Estancia but late this evening put it on standby status.

On Tuesday the Trigo Fire burning since early last week was reported to be nearly contained. Fire crews were mopping up hot spots, rehab work had begun, and firefighters were being released to other fires in the Southwest.

All that changed about 3 p.m. when gusts blew embers northward about a half mile beyond the fire lines. The Trigo Fire roared back to life with fast-moving flames and a billowing smoke cloud visible from metro Albuquerque.

"This got really serious really quick," Arlene Perea of the Forest Service Mountainair Ranger District said. "This is a completely wind-driven fire once it jumped containment lines today.

"We knew that we were once again looking at evacuations; we knew that homes were threatened."

The Forest Service has no idea how much additional land has been blackened beyond the figure reported Tuesday of about 5,000 acres.

The Trigo Fire is now classified as a Type I incident which means firefighters from all over the country will be flying in Thursday to fight this fire.

Air tankers were able to drop retardant on the fire until nightfall, and there are well more than 100 firefighters on the ground fighting this fire tonight.

Many are checking and enforcing existing fire lines they dug a week or so ago as a precaution to see if they held.

The fire blew up near Capilla Peak which has a fire lookout tower and several communications towers. Some of the communications facilities have been shut down although law-enforcement users have shifted to backup systems.

The Forest Service will check out the area by air in the morning see if any more homes have burned. When the fire made its last major run driving over the top of the Manzanos and down the eastern slop early last week it destroyed 18 structures, nine of them homes, cabins and mobile homes.

There have been no reports of injuries.

(Thank God. And I hope it stays that way for people and animals alike.)