June 26—RUIDOSO — Dave Anderson said he is thinking about his future in this community after losing his second home to a fire in about a decade.
On Wednesday morning, Anderson, 71, looked at what was left of his 7,000-square-foot, one-bedroom, one-bath home in Alto Crest.
Surrounding the foundation were a torn fence and other pieces of his belongings, rocks that he had piled in places up to 8 feet high about a year ago to protect his home from fire.
“I put 40 tons of bricks around the house,” he said. “I thought I would be well protected.”
The burned remains of a 2019 copper Chevrolet Equinox were located at the home.
“Golly, look,” he said. “There’s nothing left at all.”
Anderson said he was standing on top of a hill near his home on June 17 when he saw a fireball moving in his direction a few miles away.
“I had ten minutes to get out,” he said. “It came so quickly.”
Anderson packed his “go bag,” which consists of food and clothing, took his 8-year-old Australian kelpie, Sadie, and left. After spending a night in his pickup in Capitan, he stayed with people in the Benito Lake area.
Anderson believes his house burned down the day he evacuated. He said he got a “semi-heads-up” about it from a friend who sent Anderson photos of the burned-out building.
“How much damage can you take?” he said. “It’s just overwhelming.”
However, he said he didn’t cry because “I’ve been through this before.”
In 2012, Anderson lost another home in Ruidoso during the Little Bear Fire that destroyed 242 homes, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
“Ruidoso can’t take much more of this,” he said. “It’s very disheartening when you lose a third of your city every two years.”
Anderson not only lost a home this time, but he and his 76-year-old brother Ron Anderson also lost their nearby business, Wild West Ski Shop, which included storage units. The ski shop’s roadside sign was unscathed.
“I can’t believe that thing didn’t even get the plate,” Ron said. “(But) I’m glad we’re all safe, and that’s all that matters. We lost a lot of stuff, but there are people dealing with much worse things than us.”
Dave said he came to Ruidoso from North Carolina in 1975 because of the weather and abundance of outdoor activities. Ron moved from Aspen, Colorado, in the early 1970s to open his own ski company, which he did in 1979 with Wild West.
That was Ron’s dream, Dave said.
On Tuesday, Dave said he had customers come to the storage units to see what was left, but everything had been destroyed. Some were crying – including himself, he admitted – while others just looked at their charred belongings.
The Anderson brothers have been surveying the damage and are talking to insurance agents to find out what’s next.
“I’ve been thinking about moving,” Dave said. “This (was) just the cream on top.”
Dave said a lady recently told him that Ruidoso will one day be the way it was.
“I said, ‘It will come back, but not in my lifetime.'”
