Firefighters hold line against destructive New Mexico blaze

(Reuters) - Firefighters in central New Mexico held the line on Wednesday against flames that roared through mountains and canyons near the resort village of Ruidoso after more than 200 homes on the outskirts of town were destroyed, officials said.

About 2,500 people forced from nine neighborhoods along the southern flank of the blaze in recent days waited for evacuation orders to be lifted. They awaited news about the fate of their homes -- while some 9,000 residents of Ruidoso, just a few miles beyond the fire's edge, wondered whether they might be next.

National Guard troops walked through the town handing out evacuation route maps on Tuesday as a precautionary measure in case authorities were forced to order the village cleared.

Damage-assessment teams reaching the fire zone for the first time determined that 224 homes and 10 outbuildings had been gutted by fire, up from an earlier tally of 35 structures lost.

Authorities said they expected to find more homes destroyed.

The so-called Little Bear Fire has charred more than 37,000 acres of rugged pine woodlands, much of it in the Lincoln National Forest, since it was ignited by lightning on June 4. Fire crews have managed to carve containment lines around 35 percent of the perimeter.

Fire information officer Jimmye Turner said buffer zones established between the town and the leading edge of the blaze were holding, though winds were starting to pick up again.

"They're working very hard to keep the fire in the area it's in," Turner said. More than 1,000 personnel were fighting the flames.

The official Ruidoso village website, which advertises the town's casino, racetrack, ski resort and other attractions, included a link to a fire bulletin with the cheerful headline: "Firefighters Have Turned the Corner on the Little Bear Fire."

The blaze was burning in the same area where firefighters in 1950 rescued an orphaned bear cub later dubbed "Smokey Bear," adopted as the real-life mascot and namesake for the U.S. Forest Service cartoon character created years before as a symbol for fire prevention.

Little Bear was one of 14 large, active fires being fought across nearly 400,000 acres in eight Western states -- Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming -- according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

One of the fires in northern Colorado, near the Wyoming border, has blackened nearly 47,000 acres of forest and grassland northwest of Fort Collins and consumed about 100 structures, including a cabin where the remains of a 62-year-old grandmother were found this week.

Linda Steadman, 62, was the first casualty of the so-called High Park Fire, sparked by lightning on Saturday, and the fourth fatality in a Colorado wildfire this year.

Hundreds of dwellings - home to roughly 2,000 people - remain threatened by the blaze and under evacuation orders. But overall fire containment held steady at just over 10 percent of the burn zone, Larimer County officials said.

Airplane tankers that were grounded on Tuesday by erratic winds and thick smoke returned to the skies on Wednesday with aerial flame-retardant drops, said incident commander Bill Hahnenberg.

Rita Baysinger, a spokeswoman for the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center, said the tankers had been flying nonstop since early Wednesday morning. "The tankers are colorful and are important assets, but it's the firefighters on the ground who put fires out," she added.

(Reporting by Zelie Pollon in Santa Fe and Keith Coffman in Denver; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Christopher Wilson)

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