On April 6, 2022, a prescribed fire driven by unusually strong spring winds jumped a control line northwest of Las Vegas, New Mexico. About two weeks later, the same dry winds rekindled embers from another nearby prescribed burn. Driven by 60-mile-per-hour (27-meter-per-second) winds with gusts reaching upwards of 80 miles per hour (36 meters per second), the two fires merged, and the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak complex became the largest in New Mexico history. By the time the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) declared the fire contained in late August, almost 350,000 acres (141,600 hectares), an area greater than the size of Los Angeles, had burned. Nearly 1,000 structures were destroyed and thousands of people were displaced. Post-fire flooding killed multiple area residents and caused extensive damage.While fire is an integral part of Southwest forest ecosystems, a century of policies geared toward fire suppression in the American West that has led to a lack of diversity is colliding with cli
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Note: Every year, we count down the top ten stories of the year, as voted on by NM Political Report staffers. See our entire countdown of 2022 top stories, to date, here. The two largest fires in state history burned simultaneously this summer, charring hundreds of thousands of acres and displaced thousands of people. Even people whose properties were not directly impacted by […]