Arizona wildfire threatening New Mexico

SPRINGERVILLE, Ariz. -- A massive wildfire in eastern Arizona that has claimed more than 30 homes and cabins and forced about 10,000 people to flee was poised to move into New Mexico on Friday, threatening more towns and possibly endangering two major power lines that bring electricity from Arizona to West Texas.

The fire has burned 639 square miles of forest, up by 114 square miles from a day earlier, officials said Friday.

Lighter winds Thursday and Friday have helped the 3,000 firefighters on the lines make progress, said Jim Whittington, a spokesman for the teams battling the fire, but high winds are expected to return Saturday. The wildfire was just 5 percent contained Friday, he said.

Meanwhile, the blaze in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, a wildfire that could become the largest in Arizona history, is rekindling a debate surrounding ponderosa pine forests that have become overgrown after a century of fire suppression.

Many in Arizona blame the legal battles that have erupted over old-growth logging that threatened endangered species. Those disputes prevented regular logging that would have prevented overgrowth, they say.

But environmentalists involved in the lawsuits said that theory is just a political scare tactic.

-- AP