In Ruidoso, recovery from fires and floods continues on

EDITOR’S NOTE: Second of two-parts.

RUIDOSO — Ten minutes north of Ruidoso, a manicured golf course anchors the Alto Lakes Golf and Country Club, surrounded by high-priced homes and tidy lawns.

Wild horses feed on grass in sight of many people living in this unincorporated community in Lincoln County. Past the Kokopelli Clubhouse, trees remain untouched by the South Fork and Salt fires, which swept through large swaths of the Ruidoso area in June, and subsequent flood damage from the ensuing monsoon season.

But one house wasn’t so lucky. Sara McMasters stands in the lot that once housed her childhood home, reminiscing about the many Christmases she spent here with the large tree in her living room. She and her husband were renovating the home before the fire struck. Nothing remains except broken dishware, ashes and the framing for a trampoline she once played on as a kid.

“It’s hard,” said McMasters, a 26-year-old real estate agent in the area, who saw footage from a friend of her burnt home in mid-June when the South Fork Fire began. “I don’t really have parents at this point, which is one of the big reasons I wanted to make the house what it was once before — you know, make it magical.”

Stories like McMasters’ are not unique in the aftermath of the South Fork and Salt fires, which burned more than 25,500 acres, led to two deaths and incinerated more than 1,500 structures, many of them homes. The fires were the most devastating in the area since the Little Bear Fire more than a decade ago, and this community is still reeling, rebuilding and facing an uphill battle.

Village officials estimate the fires have caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, some of which will be covered by federal and state recovery reimbursement funds. They have also created scenarios in which property insurance is rising — and tightening.

One way in, one way out

Eric Queller, the Village of Ruidoso’s emergency manager, drove through areas of the South Fork burn scar on a Thursday afternoon in December, passing by many crews still cleaning up the decimation left in the fire’s wake.

On one side of Main Road — a condensed street in Ruidoso’s Upper Canyon — all that stands are stone fireplaces that once housed cabins. On the other side, crews saw down snags, the name for dead or dying trees, which Queller said are the “leading cause of firefighter fatalities in the wildland.”

The Upper Canyon area on the southwest end of Ruidoso is where the South Fork Fire first entered village limits from the Mescalero Apache. After the fires left much of the area charred, floodwaters through the Rio Ruidoso and other areas began destroying homes, reaching rooflines in some places.

“Ruidoso really just sits in a bowl and everything water-wise comes through,” Queller said, pointing to floodwaters that leveled a bridge that crossed over the river. “When we talk about things that weigh on your conscience, or what keeps you up at night, this is what keeps me up at night — the one way in, one way out.”

Village officials estimate the fires and floods, of which there were about a dozen over the summer, caused more than $400 million in damages. But Ruidoso Mayor Lynn Crawford calls the number “still fluid because a lot of people haven’t built back yet.”

Authorities determined that the South Fork Fire was ignited by a lightning strike and federal investigators are still in the process of determining the cause of the Salt Fire, though they have suspected it was ignited by a couple who also started more than a dozen other smaller fires in the area. A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment on the cause of the Salt Fire, citing an ongoing investigation.

Queller said Ruidoso officials anticipate between $200 million and $300 million in federal and state recovery reimbursement funds for the recent fires and floods, noting that the village has already incurred nearly $3.7 million in emergency operation costs for overtime.

A special session in July led to a $100 million relief package for the area, about $70 million in no-interest loans of which Lincoln County and the village will split for repairs to damaged bridges, roads and other public works, including 35-foot culverts ripped out in the Paradise Canyon area. The other $30 million went toward Mescalero Apache Tribe losses, as well as to the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department to use for fire, flooding and debris flow damage, and to Federal Emergency Management Agency application assistance.

This month, a budget bill also passed by Congress included $110 billion for disaster relief programs, about $137 million of which will go toward infrastructure and economic recovery needs in New Mexico’s disaster-impacted areas.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s spending plan, in response to fires and floods becoming more extreme across New Mexico, was also released this month and includes the proposed creation of a $100 million statewide disaster recovery fund. The fund would create loans that cities and counties would repay upon receiving aid from FEMA to repair public infrastructure.

The village of Ruidoso is also drafting legislation for the upcoming session to aid mitigation efforts — like thinning state and federal lands — and hopes to do the same with New Mexico’s congressional delegation at the federal level in the future.

“It’s about how we rethink what preservation means,” Crawford said. “Right now, everything is set up on suppression; put the fire out. That’s when you see everybody show up. They fund that side. We want to at least take a portion — a small portion — and start thinning and managing.”

Insurance, assistance troubles

Connie and Brian Willingham, owners of Paws on the River, located on Sudderth Drive, Ruidoso’s main drag, recall when the first flood hit. And then the second.

“The first flood that we were here for, a roof literally washed out of the canyon and blocked the river,” Brian Willingham said.

Connie Willingham said their property insurance company denied a claim for financial loss because the fires weren’t within a mile of their property. She added that the couple didn’t have flood insurance either.

“The day of the flood was the day that our construction loan went from a construction loan to a regular loan, and that was the day I was supposed to get the flood insurance,” Connie said.

The issues the Willinghams are facing are not unique.

Insurance companies assessed properties in the days, weeks, and months after the fires and floods. The New Mexico Office of the Superintendent of Insurance even filed a lawsuit against State Farm and Casualty Co., ordering them to follow an emergency order for insurers to pay $5,000 in living expenses for policyholders, which it ended up losing in a Santa Fe District Court.

A report presented to the powerful Legislative Finance Committee by OSI in August showed that home insurance premiums rose on average about 16% from 2020 through 2023 across the state. Counties like Hidalgo, Roosevelt and Curry saw the highest increases, between 41.1% and 47.4%.

In Lincoln County, where much of the South Fork Fire burned (the Salt Fire mostly burned in the Mescalero Apache reservation in neighboring Otero County), home insurance premiums have increased anywhere from 30-50% since the summer, said Christian Myers, chief actuary with OSI, noting the percentages reflect filings with the office that have yet to receive approval.

“The rate increases there have been higher than average,” he said.

Myers said the office isn’t sure how many insurers still write policies for homeowners and businesses.

“A lot of the best information we get is anecdotal from different insurance agents,” Myers said. “As far as which are writing or not, we did a data call mandating companies submit their underwriting guidelines, which states where they are and are not accepting new business. … In Lincoln County, there are parts where they’re still writing and parts where they’re not.”

Crawford pointed to other areas of the country susceptible to natural disasters that are also contributing to the tightening.

The OSI report presented to legislators this fall also noted that, across the country, insurers paid out more in claims than they received in premiums over the last decade and took losses in 18 states in 2023 alone.

“Insurance companies are getting out of the business,” Crawford said. “And so we have a lot of them that say, ‘OK, I will insure your house, but you gotta insure at least one car with us.’ What is happening now is we have people that have other homes — they live in Texas, they come up here and stay four or five months, half a year — that (are) getting declined on their insurance because they got a big claim.”

A village spokesperson added that more than 3,300 people in the Ruidoso area have registered for FEMA assistance, with 666 approved for individual and household programs.

The road to recovery

In the Upper Canyon area, Kiara Armstrong, a debris monitor with King Industries, watches workers from other construction companies cut down the snags on Main Road, the sound of a saw hissing in the background.

She’s one of many debris monitors and construction workers in the area, cleaning up the mess left by the fires and floods so that municipalities like the village can get reimbursed by the federal government, Queller said.

Village officials are in what they call the long-term recovery and rebuilding mode instead of some of the “patchwork we’ve been doing,” Queller said. He added that the disasters caused by the fires and floods won’t close out for another decade or more, which accounts for all documents filed and money received from FEMA.

“When it comes to people’s lives, you can never be fast enough. I get that,” Queller said. “But again, we’re moving at a really good pace. … The wildfire threat has passed, but as I said, the cascading events will have floods for about seven years — major floods.

“The 12 floods we saw over the summer were only caused by .13 inches (of rain) an hour. In a regular monsoon season, we could see up to four inches in an hour, and that’s what I’m preparing for next.”

McMasters is also on the road to recovery — and rebuilding.

“It was a little hard for me to imagine coming home to something that used to be home, that’s no longer home but would be a new home,” McMasters said. “But I feel like here, when I rebuild a new home, everything is still beautiful around it. Maybe now I am the lucky one in that sense.”

Journal staff writers Dan Boyd and Cathy Cook contributed to this report.