Losing it all: How Roswell, Ruidoso business owners are coping with disaster

Watching from a nearby hillside, Dave Anderson saw everything he owned burn up in less than 10 minutes this past summer. The former Ruidoso resident, who still doesn't know if he wants to return, lost his home and family ski shop in one go.

“I lost everything,” he told the Journal. “I lost everything that I had. I was stripped down to one truck.”

And just an hour-and-a-half drive away, a historic downpour would lead to floods tearing through the Roswell a few months later. Hundreds of businesses and more than a thousand homes were affected and are still struggling to recover.

Anderson’s ski shop and home were devoured by the Salt Fire, one of two wildfires that burned around Ruidoso and the Mescalero Apache Reservation over the summer. The fires cumulatively engulfed more than 25,000 acres.

The disasters didn’t end there. Heavy floods arrived after the wildfires.

Anderson is currently living in an RV he bought 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 underwriting company Travelers left New Mexico.

“So I lucked out there,” he said.

He wasn’t as fortunate with the business property he owned, Wild West Ski Shop. Insured by Liberty Mutual, he said he’s working with an underwriter to get money from the company.

He said the insurance was verified through a contract, 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 end up needing to take the issue to the New Mexico Office of the Superintendent of Insurance.

“That may be our only option,” Anderson said.

Liberty Mutual told the Journal it doesn’t publicly comment on customer claims.

Meanwhile, Roswell residents are still trying to assess all the damage caused by its September flooding, which officials deemed a “500-year flood.”

Michael Espiritu is the president and CEO of the Roswell-Chaves County Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit 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 were lost and how many people were displaced. He said the flooding impacted more than 1,000 homes and about 200 businesses.

Espiritu said local communities have really banded together amid the disasters to clean up afterward and recover. He said Ruidoso was immediately helping Roswell, knowing 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, Carlsbad. I mean, there are a lot of folks in the region — Clovis — everyone's just kind of helped.”

Too expensive, too hard to reopen

Ruidoso’s Wild West Ski Shop won’t be reopening.

Anderson said he was a silent partner in the business. He owned the property and sold his end of the business to his brother, whose Bonito Lake property he’s now staying on.

And at 76 years old, Anderson said his brother is “up in his years.”

“So he's like, ‘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 the insurance companies, they're going to up the rates so high that people are going to have a very difficult time starting over,” Anderson said.

He said that’ll 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 in some way,” he said. “Either that, or the state is going to have to have their own insurance for people because people aren't going to be able to afford it.”

Anderson is mulling over the same choice in rebuilding his Ruidoso home. He said if the insurance is too expensive, he’ll just move on.

It’s not the first home he’s lost to wildfires. He lost his house to the Little Bear Fire that burned around Ruidoso in 2012.

Alyx Duncan and her husband owned and ran Mountain Air Cabins, vacation rental cabins in Ruidoso. She said there were five cabins surrounding an office, all of which burned up in the fire.

Duncan and her husband actually lived on the site for the first 11 years running the business and just bought a home last year that survived the disasters.

Even if ongoing mudslides in the Upper Canyon where the Mountain Air Cabins weren’t preventing Duncan from rebuilding, she said, insurance isn’t enough to cover rebuilding.

“Unfortunately, we had state insurance, because that's the only insurance we could get. And so we were very, very under covered, underinsured, I guess,” Duncan said.

Then, a week after the fire, Duncan hosted an event at a separate office building where community members came together to offer food, wash clothes and give haircuts to people who were displaced and first responders.

While the event was going on, a flash flood on U.S. Highway 70 filled the office with mud and soot, also washing away cars, tables and chairs. Duncan, who said her and her husband had just moved into the office last year, said it caused about eight inches of mud and muck to fill up the 7,000-square-foot building.

“We are cleaning out the building and getting that going back again. We ordered windows this last week, so that’s exciting, because we can then un-board our windows,” she said.

Duncan is still waiting to receive flood insurance.

The economic impact

Anderson said his family’s ski shop had been struggling before the disasters because Ruidoso’s ski area isn’t open seven days a week like it once was. Ski Apache was open five days a week before the disasters.

“We were operating about 20% of our normal income into the village, which was just horrendous. I mean, there are several businesses that have gone out of business,” he said.

The disasters ravaged Duncan’s cabin rental income. She and her husband lost seven cabins total that they owned as well as seven properties they managed, leaving around two dozen management properties left to make income off of.

She said their business was down 90% in July, which is normally the busiest month, down 75% in August and is running at 50% now.

“So it’s coming back, but slow,” 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 been offering huge product discounts to disaster victims to help out.

“So (cleaning up) takes a lot of time, energy that would have been applied to running your business,” Espiritu said.

A loss of community areas has also hurt disaster areas. Espiritu said Roswell lost its convention center, which is where it held city council meetings and a lot of public events. He also said the flooding impacted the Roswell Museum and Art Center, and the city paid for a courier to send artwork, of which that museum had hundreds of millions of dollars worth, to Chicago for restoration and repair.

“It was in the hardest hit area,” he said.

He added that tourism doesn’t seem to be impacted too majorly and he sees tourists walking up and down the main street still.

The city has had to postpone some pilot arrivals who are preparing for the National Championship Air Races, which just recently moved from Reno, Nevada, to Roswell. The races aren’t until September but pilots arrive early to see the course. Espiritu said the event generates a local economic impact of more than $158 annually with over 100,000 spectators.

He’s hopeful the actual races in September won’t be impacted by this year’s flooding.

The flooding also caused road closures, including U.S. Highway 285, which is the main way to get from Roswell to Artesia. Espiritu said that’s created barriers for Roswell residents that work in the Artesia oil fields in getting to work.

Shane Regensberg is the president of the Mora County Chamber of Commerce. He had to evacuate from his home in 2022 when the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire was raging in northern New Mexico.

Since then, he said, he’s watched the Mora County economy grow stronger as residents spend money locally. Likewise, he encouraged others to support their local economies after disasters.

“Whether it's Roswell, Ruidoso, whatever, just shop local as much as you can,” he said, “because that's what strengthens your economy more, is when you keep the dollars in your own county.”

Anderson asked the public to give Ruidoso time to recover and rebuild to its beautiful self.

“We'll be back, and we'll be back strong,” he said.