Red flag warnings for extreme fire danger were in place Friday for nearly all of New Mexico and parts of Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
The fires are burning unusually hot and fast for this time of year, especially in the Southwest, where experts said some timber in the region is drier than kiln-dried wood.
"We still have some fire weather to get through tonight, tomorrow and several days afterwards," fire behavior specialist Stewart Turner said at Friday night's briefing in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
"It's very important that everybody pays attention to the evacuation orders because this is a very, very serious fire — very dangerous fire behavior out there."
Matthew Probst, Las Vegas-based medical director for the health clinic network El Centro Family Health, said the nearby fire has swept through impoverished communities already frayed by the coronavirus pandemic.
"Here, you're losing meager homes, but it's everything. It's all they had," said Probst, a coordinator of county health services for wildfire evacuees.
Rural families in the area were caught off guard after heading home from an early evacuation — only to be ambushed by a fast-moving fire last week.
A 79-year-old widow from the tiny community of Sapello left her house and a blue heeler cattle dog for a doctor's appointment, with boxes packed for possible evacuation with jewelry and her 1964 wedding photos. Winds kicked up, and police said it was too late to go back for anything.
"They said, 'No ma'am, it's far too dangerous,'" said Sonya Berg in a phone interview Friday from an emergency shelter at a nearby middle school.
A close friend says the house burned, but Berg doesn't want to believe it. A neighbor rescued the dog.
"I'm in denial until I go and see it," said Berg, whose husband passed away in 2019 and was buried outside the home. "He's up there, he's been through the whole thing. I'm hoping the gravestone we put up is still there."
In the Jemez Mountains east of Los Alamos, another wildfire spanning 12 square miles (30 square kilometers) crept in the direction of Bandelier National Monument, which closed its backcountry hiking trails as a precaution while central visiting areas remained open.
In northern Arizona, authorities are nearing full containment of a 30 square-mile (77 square-kilometer) blaze that destroyed at least 30 homes near Flagstaff and forced hundreds to evacuate. A top-level national management team turned it back over to the local forest Friday.
"It's pretty stable for the most part," said Coconino National Forest spokeswoman Randi Shaffer. "We're not seeing any forecasted crazy weather patterns. We have fire crews monitoring, all of our suppression efforts have been holding."
Some residents near another fire 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of Prescott haven't been allowed back home. Firefighters have about one-third of the 14 square-mile (37-square-kilometer) fire's perimeter contained. Lighter winds were expected into the weekend, but low humidity will be a concern, fire officials said.
