Fire crews were battling a 20-plus-acre uncontained blaze well into Sunday evening near Chimayo. Several homes had been evacuated. There were no immediate reports of injuries, but at least three structures, including one home, had burned, authorities said.
Daniel Ware of the State Forestry Division said that at about 9 p.m., the fire was not showing any active flame and that crews were mopping up, but that the blaze had yet to be contained.
"Concerns this evening are potentially shifting winds that could cause some reignition of hot spots," Ware said in an email update.
Ware said the blaze, named the Chimayo Fire by incident commanders, started at 4:32 p.m. Sunday off N.M. 76 and scorched both Bureau of Land Management and privately owned land. He said the brunt of the fire was near N.M. 76 and County Road 87.
"They are working really hard to get a control line around it," Santa Fe County Assistant Fire Chief John Wheeler said earlier in the evening. He said the looming darkness would make battling the fire even more difficult.
The State Forestry Division listed the fire as human-caused in an incident update, but officials were unclear about how the fire started.
Two mobile homes in the 600 block of N.M. 76 were evacuated and considered in immediate danger, and Ware wrote in an email that there were "100 homes to the north" that would have been in danger if the fire had spread in that direction. Wind gusts of 10 to
15 miles per hour in a southwest direction were reported around 6:45 p.m.
Ware said two mobile homes at 619 N.M. 76 and an undetermined number of homes off County Road 91 were those that were evacuated.
Witnesses said the fire was also burning near the Lighthouse Church on N.M. 76 in Chimayo, and that at least one tree had caught on fire.
More than a dozen fire engines were on scene, along with scores of firefighters from Santa Fe, Espanola and the BLM.
Santa Fe County Fire Department Battalion Chief Bobbie Montoya also reported that several homes were evacuated and that crews from several jurisdictions were trying to control the blaze in the Chimayo bosque.
In about two hours, the fire had grown from 5 to 20 acres, Montoya said. He added that it was burning to the west and at one point jumped the Santa Cruz River, but that flare-up was doused.
An employee at the Rancho de Chimayo restaurant on County Road 98, near the intersection with N.M. 76, said in a phone interview that the fire appeared to be about three miles to the west.
"It must be pretty bad because a lot of people are talking about it," said the employee, who asked not to be identified.
Eastbound traffic on N.M. 76 was being redirected at a point about seven miles east of U.S. 84/285. The road was closed in both directions.
Wheeler had said crews faced an uphill battle to contain the blaze but that they "will keep working until they are relieved or the fire is out."
Firefighters were expected to be battling the blaze through the night.
Copyright 2012 - The Santa Fe New Mexican
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
