November 1 – Dave Anderson watched from a nearby hill as everything he owned burned in less than ten minutes last summer. The former Ruidoso resident, who still doesn’t know if he wants to return, lost his home and family ski shop in one fell swoop.
“I lost everything,” he told the Journal. “I lost everything I had. I was stripped down to one truck.”
And just an hour and a half away, a historic downpour would lead to flooding sweeping through the city of Roswell a few months later. Hundreds of businesses and more than a thousand homes have been affected and are still struggling to recover.
Anderson’s ski shop and home were engulfed by the Salt Fire, one of two wildfires burning around Ruidoso and the Mescalero Apache Reservation this summer. The fires destroyed a total of more than 25,000 hectares.
The disasters did not stop there. After the forest fires there were heavy floods.
Anderson currently lives in an RV he purchased on his brother’s property in Bonito Lake. He paid for the recreational vehicle with financial assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he said, after not realizing he had lost his Geico home insurance in 2019 when insurance company Travelers left New Mexico.
“So I got lucky there,” he said.
He wasn’t so lucky with the business building he owned, Wild West Ski Shop. He is insured by Liberty Mutual and says he is working with an insurer to get money from the company.
He said the insurance was verified through a contract and not a policy, so Liberty Mutual is “obligated to pay.” But, he said, it’s still a fight to get the money and he may ultimately have to take the issue to the New Mexico Insurance Superintendent’s office.
“That may be our only option,” Anderson said.
Liberty Mutual told the Journal it does not comment publicly on customer claims.
Meanwhile, Roswell residents are still trying to assess all the damage caused by the September floods, which officials deemed a “500-year flood.” Michael Espiritu is the president and CEO of the Roswell-Chaves County Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization focused on recruiting and retaining businesses in the area.
He said the city is still undergoing recovery and cleanup operations, taking stock of how many homes have been lost and how many people have been displaced. He said the flooding affected more than 1,000 homes and about 200 businesses.
Espiritu said local communities really came together during the disasters to clean up and recover afterwards. He said Ruidoso immediately helped Roswell because he knew firsthand what the disasters are like.
“They’ve been very supportive and they’ve been through it so they understand it, so they’ve been here,” he said, “as well as other communities like Artesia and Carlsbad. I mean, there’s a lot of people in the area – Clovis – everyone just helped.”
Too expensive, too difficult to reopen
Ruidoso’s Wild West Ski Shop will not reopen.
Anderson said he was a silent partner in the business. He owned the property and sold his share of the business to his brother, on whose estate he now resides in Bonito Lake.
And at 76, Anderson said his brother is “at his age.”
“So he says, ‘Do I really want to rebuild and start over?’” Anderson said. “And I told him I understand.”
But even if his brother wanted to rebuild, it would be difficult.
“The problem is that the insurance companies are going to raise rates so high that people are going to have a really hard time starting over,” Anderson said.
He said this will cause people to move away from New Mexico. And, he added, this is a national issue.
“I think the state is going to have to do something about that. They’re going to have to intervene somehow,” he said. “Either that, or the state will have to provide people with their own insurance, because people can’t afford that.”
Anderson is considering the same choice as he rebuilds his Ruidoso home. He said if insurance becomes too expensive, he will simply move on.
It is not the first house he has lost to forest fires. He lost his home to the Little Bear Fire that burned around Ruidoso in 2012.
Alyx Duncan and her husband owned and operated Mountain Air Cabins, vacation cabins in Ruidoso. She said there were five huts surrounding an office, all of which burned in the fire.
Duncan and her husband lived on the property and ran the business for the first eleven years. Last year they just bought a house that survived the disasters.
Even if ongoing mudslides in the Upper Canyon, where the Mountain Air Cabins do not prevent Duncan from rebuilding, insurance is not enough to cover the reconstruction, she said.
“Unfortunately, we had government insurance because that’s the only insurance we could get. And so we were very, very undercovered, underinsured, I think,” Duncan said.
Then, a week after the fire, Duncan hosted an event in a separate office building where community members gathered to offer food, wash clothes and provide haircuts to displaced people and first responders.
While the event was taking place, a flash flood on US Highway 70 filled the office with mud and soot, also washing away cars, tables and chairs. Duncan, who said she and her husband just moved into the office last year, said it caused about eight inches of mud and mud to fill the 7,000-square-foot building.
“We’re cleaning out the building and getting that back. We ordered windows last week, so that’s exciting because then we can bring our windows on board,” she said.
Duncan is still waiting for flood insurance.
The economic impact
Anderson said his family’s ski shop was struggling before the disasters because the Ruidoso ski area is no longer open seven days a week like it used to be. Ski Apache was open five days a week before the disasters.
“We were operating about 20% of our normal income in the village, which was just terrible. I mean, there are several businesses that have gone bankrupt,” he said.
The disasters devastated Duncan’s rental income. She and her husband lost a total of seven cabins they owned, as well as seven properties they managed, leaving about two dozen management properties to generate income from.
She said their sales fell 90% in July, which is normally their busiest month, fell 75% in August and are now at 50%.
“So it’s coming back, but slowly,” she said.
In Roswell, Espiritu said businesses are gradually reopening. He said some are open but have limited operations as owners clean up mud, water damage and other now useless materials. He said local store Allison’s Home Supply House has offered huge product discounts to disaster victims to help.
“So (cleaning up) takes a lot of time, energy that would have been spent running your business,” Espiritu said.
The loss of community businesses has also hit disaster areas. Espiritu said Roswell lost its convention center, where it held city council meetings and many public events. He also said the flooding affected the Roswell Museum and Art Center, and that the city paid a courier to send works of art, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, to Chicago for restoration and repairs.
“It was in the hardest hit area,” he said.
He added that tourism doesn’t seem to be affected too much and he still sees tourists walking along the main street.
The city has had to delay the arrival of some pilots preparing for the National Championship Air Races, which recently moved from Reno, Nevada, to Roswell. The races aren’t until September, but pilots arrive early to check out the course. Espiritu said the event generates a local economic impact of more than $158 annually with more than 100,000 spectators.
He is hopeful that the actual races in September will not be affected by this year’s flooding.
The flooding also caused road closures, including U.S. Highway 285, the main way to get from Roswell to Artesia. Espiritu said this creates barriers for Roswell residents who work in the Artesia oil fields to get to work.
Shane Regensberg is president of the Mora County Chamber of Commerce. He had to leave his home in 2022 as the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire raged in northern New Mexico.
Since then, he said, he has seen Mora County’s economy grow stronger as residents spend money locally. Likewise, he encouraged others to support their local economies after disasters.
“Whether it’s Roswell, Ruidoso or whatever, just shop local as much as possible,” he said, “because that’s what strengthens your economy the most when you keep the dollars in your home country.”
Anderson asked the crowd to give Ruidoso time to recover and rebuild back to his wonderful self.
“We’ll be back, and we’ll be back strong,” he said.
