Ruidoso reels as weekend flooding in burn scar brings more damage

Flooding over the weekend turned U.S. 70 near Ruidoso into "a huge, raging river," mayor Lynn Crawford said in an interview Monday.

On Sunday and overnight into Monday, Army National Guard soldiers, firefighters, police and other emergency workers rescued more than 100 people from flooding in the area, a New Mexico National Guard spokesman confirmed. 

As of Monday afternoon, residents were unable to return to their about 80 homes because of the flooding, Crawford said. 

While Saturday's rainfall was focused on the South Fork burn scar on the city's west side, Sunday's rains came down in the Salt Fire's burn scar, according to a briefing Monday from the National Weather Service's Albuquerque office. 

The Salt Fire has burned almost 8,000 acres southeast of Ruidoso on the Mescalero Apache Reservation. 

"There were several mobile home parks that were affected greatly, and a lot of people were in there," Crawford said of the Sunday flooding from the Salt burn scar. "We've never seen flooding like that ever in that area." 

The flash flood pushed a semi-truck down the highway "like a little toy," Crawford said. It carried some mobile homes off their foundations and filled others with as much as 2 feet of mud and debris. The flooding also broke residential water and gas lines and caused a breach at Ruidoso's wastewater treatment plant that forced officials to close the facility Sunday, he said. 

The floods caused potentially millions of dollars in damage, but Crawford said no one was known to have died or to have been severely injured by them. 

Crews led by the National Guard rescued more than 100 people from flash floods between Saturday and Monday morning, agency's spokesman Hank Minitrez said Monday. Most of those rescues were undertaken from Sunday evening to Monday morning in the floods from the Salt burn scar. 

The "swiftwater rescue" missions consisted of National Guard soldiers and other workers taking tactical vehicles into affected areas to help people escape the rising, rushing waters, Minitrez said, adding the vehicles are meant to haul troops and supplies, and "in this case, we just had them packed with people nonstop." 

Minitrez described the rescue of four elderly people from a Ruidoso home during a flash flood on Saturday, just minutes before the waters rushing through the home rose to about 6 feet high. 

Officials in Ruidoso said Monday they were keeping an eye on the weather and remaining vigilant to the threat of more flooding and debris flows from the fresh burn scars. 

Meteorologists said rain could return to the region early this week. 

The chance of precipitation forecasted for Ruidoso was 70%  Tuesday and 80% Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service's briefing Monday afternoon. 

The moderate to severe burn seen in the 17,569-acre South Fork burn scar increases the likelihood of debris flow during rainfall, weather service meteorologist Clay Anderson said during the briefing. 

"If the South Fork burn scar gets about 0.4 inches in 15 minutes, there is an 80% to 100% likelihood of debris flow over most of the burn scar, over channels that push that debris through Ruidoso," Anderson said. "These rainfall rates are so probable that multiple debris flow events are virtually guaranteed this summer and for five to seven years to come."