The children — a 4-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy — had been camping with their parents when they were swept away. The father and mother were being treated for injuries sustained in the flooding at a hospital in El Paso, Texas, according to officials at Fort Bliss, where the father is stationed.
Mayor Lynn Crawford said hearts are broken over the lives lost and stomachs are in knots as residents begin to take stock of the damage.
A popular summer retreat nestled in the mountains of southern New Mexico, Ruidoso is no stranger to tragedy. It has spent a year rebuilding following destructive wildfires last summer and the flooding that followed.
Tuesday's rainfall was more than could be absorbed by the hillsides and canyons within the burn scar.
At the Riverside RV Park, owner Barbara Arthur and her guests scrambled up a nearby slope when the river started coursing through the site Tuesday afternoon. It was the sixth time the river rose in the last several weeks and by far the worst, she said.
Arthur’s house was destroyed along with a nearby rental house she owns, and the water floated three trailers in the RV park. It was more destruction than she suffered from flooding last year, and possibly more than she can recover from, she said.
“We’re just trying to recover from last year and man here we go again,” she said. “It’s going to be a long road, and I have no doubt that, you know, everybody’s going to pull together and get it done. But I may not be one of them.”
Setting records
Officials urged residents to seek higher ground as the Rio Ruidoso rose to more than 20 feet (6 meters), according to preliminary data recorded by a U.S. Geological Survey gauge. That was nearly 5 feet (1.52 meters) more than the previous high the year before.
The National Weather Service issued flood warnings throughout Tuesday, with an upgraded emergency notification coming at 2:47 p.m. Most of the precipitation fell sometime between about 2:30 and 4 p.m.
“We received three and a half inches of rain on the South Fork burn scar in about a 90-minute period. That water came directly into our community and impacted the community head on,” Mayor Crawford said during a news conference.
As little as a quarter of an inch of rain over a wildfire burn scar can cause flooding.
“So they were probably already getting some runoff from upstream before it even actually started raining on top of the wildfire burn scar,” said Todd Shoemake, a meteorologist for the weather service in Albuquerque. “It really was just kind of a terrible coincidence of events that led to that.”
The amount of rainfall wasn’t necessarily historical, Shoemake said, but he likened it to a 100-year storm, or having a 1% chance of happening in any given year.
Cleanup begins
Emergency crews completed dozens of swift water rescues before the water receded Tuesday, including of people who were trapped in their homes and cars. Two National Guard teams and several local crews already were in the area when the flooding began, said Danielle Silva of the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Several roads remained closed Wednesday and the mayor said it would take time to restore utilities in some neighborhoods. He said damage assessments would take several days to complete.
Along the river, pieces of metal were wrapped around trees while broken branches were wedged against homes and twisted among the Ponderosa pines that were still standing along the banks. The river — just a trickle compared to the day before — was thick with sediment.
Shelters were open Wednesday and food banks doled out provisions, as village officials encouraged people to call an emergency line if their loved ones or neighbors were missing or affected by the flood.
The floods came just days after flash floods in Texas killed more than 100 people and left more than 160 people missing.
Bracing for more
Local officials said the village, as the flood hit, was still in the process of replacing outdoor warning sirens that were destroyed last year by wildfire and reassessing risks along the local flood plain in cooperation with federal authorities.
Mayor Crawford reiterated Wednesday that Ruidoso will continue to be in the crosshairs with each monsoon, as there's still work to do to recover from the wildfire. The rainy season begins in June and runs through September.
Over the last year, hazardous trees have been removed, erosion control barriers have been built, and mulching and seeding projects have been done to reduce flood risks and help the watershed recover.
The mayor said some of that helped save homes on Tuesday, but other spots still are vulnerable. Ruidoso Emergency Manager Eric Quellar said emergency crews also were rushing to clear debris, including dislodged houses, that might make any renewed flooding worse.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed an emergency declaration Tuesday night to free up state resources and requests were pending for more assistance from the federal government.
The village’s tourism-based economy has been thrown into turmoil once again. With floodwaters running through Ruidoso Downs, one of the horse track's three signature summer quarter-horse races has been derailed. It was scheduled to start Friday.
The mayor said people are anxious and afraid as the monsoon is sure to bring more rain throughout the summer.
“Yesterday was a good lesson — you know that Mother Nature is a much bigger powerful force than we are,” he said. “And that we can do a lot of things to protect ourselves and to try to help direct and whatever, but we cannot control.”
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Associated Press writers Matt Brown in Denver and Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque contributed to this report.
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