July 1 – Ruidoso’s death throes, like the rain, show no end.
After wildfires destroyed more than 1,400 buildings in and around the southern New Mexico mountain town and killed two people, severe flooding has threatened even more lives and destroyed even more homes.
According to weather experts, the threat of flooding in Ruidoso is far from over as the region’s monsoon season continues.
Flooding over the weekend has turned U.S. 70 near Ruidoso into “a huge, raging river,” Mayor Lynn Crawford said in an interview Monday.
On Sunday and into Monday night, Army National Guard soldiers, firefighters, police officers and other emergency responders rescued more than 100 people from floodwaters in the area, a New Mexico National Guard spokesman confirmed.
As of Monday afternoon, residents were unable to return to their 80 homes because of the flooding, Crawford said.
While Saturday’s rainfall was concentrated in the South Fork burns on the city’s west side, Sunday’s rain fell primarily in the Salt Fire burns, according to a Monday briefing from the National Weather Service office in Albuquerque.
The Salt Fire has burned nearly 20,000 acres southeast of Ruidoso on the Mescalero Apache Reservation.
“There were several mobile home parks that were hit hard, and there were a lot of people,” Crawford said of Sunday’s flooding from the Salt Burn Scar. “We’ve never seen flooding like this in that area.”
The flash flood pushed a semitruck down the highway “like a little toy,” Crawford said. It tore some mobile homes off their foundations and filled others with as much as two feet of mud and debris. The flooding also broke water and gas lines to homes and caused a rupture at Ruidoso’s wastewater treatment plant, forcing officials to close the facility Sunday, he said.
The floods may have caused millions of dollars in damage, but Crawford said no one was reported killed or seriously injured.
Crews led by the National Guard rescued more than 100 people from flash flooding between Saturday and Monday morning, agency spokesman Hank Minitrez said Monday. Most of those rescues were conducted Sunday night into Monday morning in floodwaters in the Salt Burn scar.
The “swift-water rescue missions” involved National Guard soldiers and other personnel driving tactical vehicles into affected areas to help people escape the rising, raging waters, Minitrez said. He added that the vehicles are meant to transport troops and supplies, and “in this case, we just kept them loaded with people nonstop.”
Minitrez described how four elderly people were rescued from a Ruidoso home during a flash flood on Saturday, minutes before water rushed through the house and rose about six feet high.
Officials in Ruidoso said Monday they are closely monitoring the weather and remain vigilant for the threat of more flooding and debris flows from fresh burn wounds.
Meteorologists predict that rain may return to the region early this week.
According to the National Weather Service briefing Monday afternoon, the chance of precipitation in Ruidoso was 70% on Tuesday and 80% on Wednesday.
The moderate to severe fire in the 17,569-acre South Fork burn increases the potential for debris flows during rainfall, weather service meteorologist Clay Anderson said during the briefing.
“If the South Fork fire scar gets to about 0.4 inches in 15 minutes, there’s an 80 percent to 100 percent chance that debris flows across most of the fire scar, across channels that push that debris through Ruidoso,” Anderson said. “This rainfall event is so likely that there will almost certainly be multiple debris flows this summer and over the next five to seven years.”
