Crews continued mop-up work Monday on the larger of two wildfires burning in New Mexico, while firefighters on the smaller blaze predicted it would be completely contained Monday night.
Some 26 people are still assigned to the 64,488-acre Peppin Fire in the Capitan Mountains, largely doing rehabilitation work such as seeding along fire lines dug by bulldozers and putting in water bars to prevent erosion, said Brian Scott of the Smokey Bear Ranger District.
Crews also patrolled the fire for hot spots, doing ``very limited staff monitoring,'' Scott said Monday.
The blaze, sparked by lightning May 15, is 95 percent contained. It has cost $7.15 million to fight so far, Scott said.
The 358-acre Bernardo Fire burning in a thickly wooded area along the Rio Grande near the border of Valencia and Socorro counties also has been reduced to the mop-up phase.
Lines dug around the fire have all held, fire information officer Dan Ware said Monday.
The blaze was considered 50 percent contained while crews waited to see if unburned pockets within the lines flare up or need to be burned out, Ware said. Still, crews expected the fire to be 100 percent contained sometime Monday night, he said.
Ware had no estimate of the cost of fighting the blaze, which flared up Friday. Authorities believe it was human-caused, but the exact cause remains under investigation, he said.
The Bernardo Fire burned a house and mobile home on one piece of property near the river. Officials said no one lived in either home. The Peppin Fire burned 12 cabins early on.
The 8,595-acre Sedgwick Fire in the Zuni Mountains near Grants was declared 100 percent contained Sunday afternoon. The human-caused fire started June 12.
