'You will be touched.' Ruidoso prepares for more storms and flooding

RUIDOSO — “The reason we are people of faith is not that terrible things may not happen to us,” Rev. Emmanuel Stephen said from his pulpit Sunday. “The reason we are Christians is that in the face of terrible disasters, our faith is able to carry us through.”

A couple of hundred people seated in the sanctuary of St. Eleanor Roman Catholic Church listened to Stephen’s first homily since last week’s historic flash flood, caused by monsoon rains over a mountainside left bald by last year’s wildfires. The Rio Ruidoso swelled over 20 feet in a surge that battered and destroyed vehicles and homes, uprooted infrastructure, took out one bridge and claimed the lives of three people. Sixty-five people were rescued from the flood waters.

“When Christ was on the cross, God was with him,” Stephen continued. “God does not abandon us in our suffering, and for us to realize that, even within our loss. … That should strengthen our faith and our hope that we will be able to get over this all together.”

On Sunday, the village awoke to sunny skies, but also a flood warning for the afternoon, as thunderstorms were predicted to drop more rain over the burn scar.

Throughout the weekend, in areas hit the hardest last week, residents and volunteers cleared mud, salvaged materials such as metal roofs from wrecked trailer homes and packed their belongings, working to get as much done as possible before the next storm. Volunteers, some with tools and skills who came to Ruidoso after seeing news reports about last week’s historic flood, pitched in to help. Local churches and businesses also brought volunteer workers, cleaning supplies or water and snacks.

On Saturday, Tony Rue stood outside a trailer home occupied by his son, who was out of state. The trailer took in water and had been picked up by the river and slammed into a tree. With him was Sergio Ortiz, a construction worker who had lived in a neighboring trailer home for 15 years – which now sat ripped apart, a complete loss. The tools on which Ortiz depends to make a living were lost as well.

“Everybody’s dumbfounded,” Rue said. “A lot of people don’t have insurance. They won’t insure here because the water is higher than the road.”

There also will be no rebuilding here. The owner of the mobile home park, sitting on Galivan Canyon Road, ordered all of the properties evacuated, according to the village. The entire neighborhood, now a pile of wreckage in a patch of mud close to the river, will have to find somewhere else to live.

Helping Rue and Ortiz was their friend, Jose Lozoya, a contractor who lost his home and most of what he owned in last year’s wildfires. “That’s life,” he said. “And no insurance, so I lost everything.”

The three men joked and laughed together, but their shock and grief were clear enough. Rue expressed low confidence in local government and argued more should be done to prepare for floods, saying, “They need to fix the bridges, the culverts, everything.”

Yet the bridges and culverts mostly held up last Tuesday, with just one bridge serving a few upper canyon homes out of service.

Deputy Village Manager Michael Martinez opened a meeting with reporters on Sunday by asking them to pull out their mobile phones and look at their settings because, he said, many people have local alerts switched off by default and do not know it.

The village also has a single-tone siren system used for evacuating the village, such as during last year’s fires, but Martinez said using it during a flash flood would trigger disaster, triggering heavy traffic near floodways.

“Everyone in the village of Ruidoso knows: If the sirens go off, you’re evacuating town,” Martinez said. “What happens now? You put people right in the middle of flash flooding. We would have had 200 to 500 deaths.”

With mild weather over most of the weekend, the village had time to prepare while using its web site and social media platforms to promote awareness of weather forecasts and flood safety. Crews were still restoring water and power to some neighborhoods. A National Weather Service meteorologist was embedded with emergency officials, keeping an eye on the canyons, knowing that if rain dumps water quickly enough over the burn scar, flood conditions will escalate rapidly.

The NWS issued a flood watch from Sunday afternoon through 9 p.m. Monday, with rain and thunderstorms expected to move slowly and erratically across the Sacramento Mountains.

Teams of first responders, public works personnel, state National Guard and local search-and-rescue teams from around New Mexico and Utah were stationed in multiple locations of the village, since the river runs through the middle of town and a major flood might divide Ruidoso into three areas.

The deaths of two children and one adult last Tuesday — who had been staying at a midtown RV park when the river swept them away — weighed on Martinez during an interview where he fought back tears: “Three deaths. That’s on me. That’s on my watch.”

Still, he said that there had been already been eight or nine floods since the start of this year’s monsoon season, and that plans for this year’s monsoon season, in development since last year’s fires and flooding, had proven effective.

Maps showing low-level water crossings and new floodways have been used in education campaigns to bring the public up to speed on a rapidly changing natural environment, as Ruidoso seeks to ensure safety for its residents and workers while also supporting a robust tourist economy.

“We know what we’re doing,” Martinez said. “I have an emergency manager, I have a fire chief, I have a police chief, I have directors in every position that are fighting to make sure that this community is safe.”

The village has also developed new building requirements and, following Tuesday’s disaster, he confirmed that some areas touched by the latest floods would not be eligible for rebuilding.

“We’ve had people that have fought us on this that said, ‘I will never be touched by water.’ We try to say: It’s not us that’s telling you. At some point, you will be touched.”