What's going on, Albuquerque?

Fire!

The skies are hazy and the air is thick, thanks to our neighbors to the west. Last night was particularly bad, with KOB running a banner asking people not to call 911 to report a fire. Also, my swamp cooler has been rendered useless. Boo.

Tags: arizona, smoke, wildfire

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Permalink Reply by mombat on June 7, 2011 at 9:14am

I just read through about 20 articles on-line and the only reference i could find to how the fire started was that it is human caused and under investigation. It has been an extremely dry spring so campfires, car exhaust, dropped cigs are all possible causes and could have been perpetrated by anyone.

NM Fire info

Az news story

AZ observatory

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Permalink Reply by RunLikeADog on June 7, 2011 at 9:30am

That AZ Observatory article gave me my nerd fix for the day. Pyrocumulonimbus clouds. How cool is that! Right up there with ash cloud volcano lightning. I feel for those affected by this fire, but still, nature rocks!

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Permalink Reply by once banned twice shy on June 7, 2011 at 9:21am

Blame it on "the illegals?" Seriously? Dude.

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Permalink Reply by Phil_0 on June 7, 2011 at 9:45am

That's what the ranchers say. They have no evidence, though, and the last 4 human-caused fires in that part of AZ were either set intentionally or rancher-caused. I don't know much about the niceties of border-crossing, but it seems to me like a nice roaring campfire would be just about the last thing you'd want if you were trying to avoid detection.

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Permalink Reply by Krista on June 7, 2011 at 4:45pm

Ranchers have been using undocumented migrants as a scapegoat for everything under the sun for some time now.

Necessities, I would think would be first and foremost: water.

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Torres on June 7, 2011 at 10:12am

Why is it that people must desacrilize individuals for any reason. Really? "Illegals?" Why blame *undocumented immigrants* for this fire when it is common for NM fires to be caused by general negligent behavior. Why would an AZ fire be any different? This smoke is unfortunate, but it is distasteful to twist this into an immigration policy issue.

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Permalink Reply by jeff on June 7, 2011 at 3:30pm

word.

the other day i was JOKING to my wife that i'll bet we'll hear someone claim the fire was started by some tuberculosis-carrying illegal immigrants in an anchor-baby camp...

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Permalink Reply by tomas on June 7, 2011 at 6:52pm

Stirring up the liberal bias on this site is much more fun than playing with matches.

Oh Yea, almost mised the real story.

It was the ranchers burning down their subsidized federal grazing land just so they could blame it on illegals to get attention for their right-wing agenda.

sheesh......

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Permalink Reply by Phil_0 on June 7, 2011 at 7:05pm

The "real story" so far (beyond the fire itself) is that no one has any idea how the fire started. Local ranchers jumped to blame "illegals," but there's absolutely no evidence to substantiate that at this point, and as a former resident of that neck of the woods I can tell you that people are quick to blame illegal migrants for just about everything. No need to raise any righteously-indignant right-wing hackles just yet...