ESTANCIA, N.M. – Firefighters on Friday battled hot temperatures and leaping flames to keep a New Mexico wildfire that destroyed two dozen homes from spreading north toward rural, mountain communities.

Three days after the fire erupted in the Manzano Mountains south of Albuquerque, crews made progress in holding lines amid lighter winds, said fire information officer Denise Ottaviano. The 26-square-mile fire remained “extremely active” as it shifted east in near triple-digit temperatures, she said.

Weather forecasters predicted rising temperatures into the weekend, with humidity levels bottoming out.

“We’re seeing up to 100-foot flame lengths or more throughout the day,” Ottaviano said. “We’re fighting it as many ways as we can and as safely and quickly as possible.”

Close to 700 personnel were assigned to the fire along with air tankers and helicopters. To protect more homes, aircraft dropped retardant and water on the fire’s east perimeter Friday, after fire managers released a damage assessment saying 24 homes and multiple structures had been destroyed near the small community of Chilili.

Authorities expanded a mandatory evacuation zone to include more subdivisions to the north and east. They could not say how many homes were affected or how many were directly threatened.

The fire remained uncontained and its cause was under investigation.

“This is a serious fire. We want to make sure New Mexicans understand that,” said Gov. Susana Martinez, who declared a state of emergency.

She urged residents to heed evacuation warnings.

Dozens of residents in Chilili and other surrounding villages left their homes Wednesday night after the fire made a 12,000-acre run.

Residents packed vehicles with clothes, photo albums and other belongings. Some loaded animals into livestock trailers as a wall of smoke loomed between them and the border of the Cibola National Forest.

South of the fire in Tajique, Carmen Bodine and her husband spent about three hours gathering goats and other pets before evacuating.

At first, the goats did not want to respond, focused instead on smoke rolling down the hill behind their home. Bodine and her husband could see flames from a nearby hilltop.

“It was tough. I couldn’t get them in, I was absolutely not going to leave,” she said Friday at a shelter in Estancia. “Nobody’s going to separate me from my animals. You take me out dead with my animals, but I’m not leaving my animals behind.”

State Sen. Ted Barela, a former mayor of Estancia, spoke to one woman at the shelter whose eyes were filled with tears. She told him she didn’t know where to turn.

Barela was among those working to put together a list of names and numbers so residents could be notified as authorities conducted damage assessments. The Manzanos still show the scars of previous burns, but he said it’s been at least a few years since the area has seen a major fire.

“We’ve been through this before,” he said. “This is yet another devastation.”