The Whitewater-Baldy Complex fire is growing in size and in cost and as of Sunday, the overall cost is $12,249,562.

The money is being used for the extensive fire-fighting effort that's needed to fight the now more than 240,000-acre fire.

The fire has required 1,236 people altogether, including 14 hotshot crews, 12 hand crews and 67 engines.

"When the amount of resources that you need to fight the fire increases, then that adds a level of complexity so they need additional support like incident management teams," Loretta Benavidez from the Bureau of Land Management said.

Gov. Susana Martinez's office told KFOX14 that the federal government is actually paying most of the cost. That's because only about 400 acres of the fire is actually on state land -- the rest is federal property.

The state is also eligible for funds from FEMA, which would cover about three quarters of the cost of the fire that is on state land.

The fire is not expected to be contained until early or even mid July, nearly two months after it started.

"That's really a long time so hopefully they'll be able to get it contained sooner than that," Las Crucen Linda Ledesma said.

"With any large fire there's an expectation that it could take a number of days," Benavidez said. "It may not even be days, it could even be weeks or months."

So far, 17 percent of the fire has been contained.