Growing New Mexico wildfire prompts evacuations


The Ute Park Fire has forced some residents of the small town of Cimarron, New Mexico, north of Santa Fe, to evacuate their homes on Saturday, local officials reported. The fire doubled in size Friday to span 16,000 acres, exacerbated by unseasonably dry weather and strong winds.
The fire has destroyed 14 outbuildings at a Boy Scouts camp, but so far it has not destroyed any homes or caused any casualties. The source of the blaze is unknown; there is a campfire ban in place in the area because of drought conditions.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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