- SPRING WILDFIRES
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The largest wildfire in North American came to a near standstill overnight amid light rain and frosty temperatures as firefighters scrambled Tuesday to clear flammable vegetation and deployed aircraft to douse smoldering forests. Wildland firefighters in New Mexico are bracing for the anticipated return of hot, dry and windy weather later this week. Climate change and an enduring drought are fanning the frequency and intensity of forest and grassland fires in the western U.S. A wildfire on the outskirts of Los Alamos National Laboratory is 85% encircled by clearings and barriers that can stop a wildfire from spreading further.
- TRIPLE FATAL CRASH
DEMING, N.M. (AP) — Authorities say three West Texas residents were killed when the SUV they were riding in while it was being towed on a New Mexico highway rolled after both vehicles ran off the road . A New Mexico State police spokesman said Monday that eight people were in two SUVs headed east on Interstate 10 outside the small southern New Mexico city of Deming when the accident happened Saturday night. The three men who died were not wearing seat belts and were ejected from a Nissan SUV. The Nissan driver was badly injured and four people in the SUV that had been towing the Nissan were also hurt. Two of the dead were from El Paso and the third from the nearby community of Anthony.
- SPRING WILDFIRES
MORA, N.M. (AP) — Cooler weather is helping nearly 3,000 firefighters in New Mexico prevent the nation's largest active wildfire from growing. Fire officials said Monday night that they took advantage of better conditions to expand contingency firebreaks northeast of Santa Fe ahead of a return to hotter, windier weather by the end of the week. The blaze started as two fires and burned into one large conflagration now larger than the city of Los Angeles. A rural sheriff warned at a community briefing Monday night that "just because we've had a few good days of weather ... it doesn't mean we are out of the woods yet."
- AP-US-WILDFIRES-SOWING-SEEDS
The mission was to rescue tens of thousands of invaluable tree sprouts from a research center in New Mexico and to keep safe a vital bank of millions of pine, spruce and other conifer seeds that will be used to restore fire-ravaged landscapes across the West. Owen Burney and his team succeeded in evacuating most of the priceless collection. But the superintendent of New Mexico State University's Forestry Research Center says the massive fire still churning through New Mexico highlights the need for collecting more seed, building more nurseries and planting more seedlings. The center is one of only a few such nurseries in the US and stands at the forefront of a major undertaking to rebuild more resilient forests as wildfires burn hotter, faster and more often.