RUIDOSO, NM — A southern New Mexico town that was ravaged by wildfires in June and then hit by intermittent flooding was cleaning up Monday after another round of flash floods that left dozens of people rescued and many more homeless.
“Hopefully we’ll get a little more relief on Thursday,” Scott Overpeck, the National Weather Service’s warning coordination meteorologist in Albuquerque, said Monday.
About 100 National Guard troops remained in the village of Ruidoso, about 150 miles (241 kilometers) southeast of Albuquerque, on Monday after helping with rescue efforts the day before. Videos posted on social media showed rivers of water flowing through the streets and forced the closure of several roads.
With a flash flood warning in effect for parts of central and south-central New Mexico from Monday through Tuesday, troops helped distribute sandbags and repair roads, said Danielle Silva, communications director for the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
About 45 people who were displaced from their homes spent the night in a state-funded temporary shelter, she said.
There were no immediate reports of deaths or serious injuries from any of the flooding in the town of 8,000. But Ruidoso city spokeswoman Kerry Gladden said about 200 homes have been destroyed by flooding since the Wildfires in June an estimated 1,400 structures damaged or destroyed.
The FBI said Monday that the fires were human-caused and Two people can be blamed.
The mountain resort town, which triples in population in the summer as tourists flock to escape the heat, suffered a major economic blow Monday, when the popular Ruidoso Downs horse racing track announced that flood damage would force all races to be moved to Albuquerque for the rest of the summer.
“We hate it because we know it’s going to have an economic impact on this area,” Ruidoso Downs General Manager Rick Baugh said Monday. “But we have to do it.”
Baugh said they had no choice but to make the move for safety reasons after torrential rains and floodwaters that swept across the tracks on Sunday compromised the integrity of the culverts and bridges.
“This area has never seen this kind of flooding before,” he said in a video posted to the course’s website Monday morning. “You can’t beat Mother Nature. You just can’t. She showed us yesterday who’s in control.”
According to Overpeck, most recent flooding has been caused by at least an inch of rain in a short period, but the last rain in Ruidoso on Sunday was just 0.5 inches.
“It just goes to show what can really happen in these situations, when you have just enough rain in the wrong places at the wrong time,” he said Monday of the areas devastated by the wildfires.
Overpeck said he knew the track’s decision to close for the rest of the summer was difficult, but it was the best decision for public safety.
The wildfires that broke out in late June in the Sacramento Mountains west of Ruidoso, about 115 miles (185 kilometers) northeast of Las Cruces, killed two people and destroyed more than 13 square miles (31 square kilometers) of the community.
The FBI said Monday that a man and a woman may be connected to a vehicle that fled at least five other wildfires near the village of Ruidoso in the past six weeks.
Of the 19 flash flood emergencies since June 19 in the South Fork Fire and Salt Fire burn areas, Ruidoso has been involved in 13.
More than $6 million in federal aid has been allocated to the region after President Joe Biden declared the region a major disaster area on June 20.