Giant New Mexico fire rages as drought-hit US West braces for summer

Firefighters in New Mexico battled a massive inferno that has been blazing for more than a month, raising concerns about the summer ahead in the drought-stricken western United States.

The “Hermits Peak Fire” has burned 168,000 acres at the southern end of the Rocky Mountains, destroying 170 homes and forcing roughly 16,000 people to flee their homes.

But the blaze remains just 20 percent contained.

“This is a historic fire weather event… this is a critical stage of the fire,” New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said in a briefing Friday.

“We have high temperatures and extreme wind. This is the worst possible set of conditions for any fire,” she warned.

The fire began on April 6 when a “prescribed” burn, intended to remove excess vegetation in a controlled area, escaped control due to strong winds and dry conditions.

The blaze comes at the start of the American West’s long fire season but is already the second-largest in New Mexico’s history, having burned an area more than the state’s average for an entire year.

The National Weather Service in Albuquerque warned that windy and dry conditions are expected through the weekend and “will make our bad situation worse.”

US President Joe Biden this week declared a major disaster in New Mexico, unlocking federal resources including financial aid for affected individuals.

Like much of the American West, New Mexico is in the grip of a years-long drought that has left the area parched and vulnerable to wildfire.

Reservoirs have plummeted to dangerously low levels, with Lake Mead — the country’s largest reservoir, close to Las Vegas — at 31 percent.

The water has dropped to such a historic extent that a corroded barrel containing a four-decade-old body was found in the lake earlier this week.

Lake Mead is fed by the Colorado River, which has seen its flow drop by 20 percent over the past century, driven by atmospheric warming, according to a US Geological Survey report in 2020.

Although fires are a natural part of the climate cycle and help to clear dead brush, their scale and intensity are increasing.

Climate change, according to scientists, is shifting weather patterns due to human actions such as the uncontrolled use of fossil fuels.

In certain areas, this prolongs droughts while in others, it causes unexpectedly large storms.