NM governor to hold public safety town hall in Las Cruces Thursday - By Leah Romero, Source New Mexico
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham will hold the first in a series of town halls on public safety this week in Las Cruces following what she described as a “disappointing” special legislative session.
State legislators met for only five hours July 18, with a directive from Lujan Grisham to pass several public safety laws.
Instead, lawmakers approved just House Bill 1, which will provide an additional $100 million in monetary assistance to people affected by the South Fork and Salt fires in the Ruidoso area. The bill also provided $3 million for outpatient treatment pilot programs facilitated by the Administrative Office of the Court.
Both legislative chambers adjourned sine die almost immediately after unanimously passing House Bill 1.
“This first special session of the 56th Legislature could have been handled in an email,” said Sen. Cliff Pirtle (R-Roswell) of the unanimous vote on wildfire relief.
Other lawmakers said Lujan Grisham’s proposals needed more time to craft, and that the legislation they did pass is the first step to meeting her goals.
“From that vantage point, in my opinion, we did move the ball considerably further than it’s ever been moved on these issues,” House Speaker Javier Martínez (D-Albuquerque) said in a press conference after the special session.
Lujan Grisham disagreed.
“The legislature should be embarrassed at their inability to summon even an ounce of courage to adopt common-sense legislation to make New Mexicans safer,” Lujan Grisham said in response to the brief session. “This was one of the most disappointing days of my career, and the public should be outraged.”
The governor’s office announced the Las Cruces town hall on Monday, adding that it will be followed by similar public meetings around the state in the “near future.” Tuesday morning, meetings in Albuquerque and Española were added for next week.
Thursday’s town hall is open to the public and will be held at 5:30 p.m. at the Las Cruces Convention Center, 680 E. University Ave. It will also be live streamed from the governor’s Facebook page.
“The town hall in Las Cruces this Thursday is an opportunity to hear directly from New Mexicans grappling with the state’s crime problem and collaborate as a community on effective strategies to enhance public safety statewide,” Lujan Grisham’s office said.
Ruidoso Downs is moving to Albuquerque for the remainder of the season– KUNM News
After the battering natural disasters that hit this summer, the Ruidoso Downs horse race track has been left in shambles. The track has been deemed unsafe for the public and unusable for riders.
But this isn’t the end for the 2024 Ruidoso horse race season. The Albuquerque race track has agreed to host the riders for the remainder of this year!
The new location comes with challenges of space to keep the horses and the adjustment to new terrain, but nothing that the riders can’t handle.
Now that the races have been relocated, Ruidoso has begun work on restoring their track.
Races in Albuquerque will start up next weekend.
FBI says man, woman may be linked to six human-caused wildfires in southern New Mexico — Associated Press, Source New Mexico
A wildfire that burned more than 12 square miles (31.08 square kilometers) in southern New Mexico last month was human caused and two people may be to blame, federal authorities said Monday.
The FBI said a man and woman may be linked to a vehicle seen fleeing from at least five other wildfires near the village of Ruidoso over a six-week span.
The names of the couple have not been released because they haven't been charged, according to authorities.
FBI investigators said there have been 16 wildfires between May 3 to June 18 in the Mescalero Apache Reservation and all are believed to be human-caused.
The lightning-caused South Fork Fire and Salt Fire both started on June 17.
Authorities said the Salt Fire charred more than 12 square miles and was deliberately set.
Together, the Salt and South Fork wildfires charred more than 25000 acres and it took firefighters weeks to contain the blazes.
Federal investigators determined that all the fires were started within an area of 25 square miles.
Two people died and over 1,400 structures in Ruidoso were burned in the South Fork Fire.
New Mexico village battered by wildfires in June now digging out from another round of flooding — Associated Press
A southern New Mexico village that was ravaged by wildfires in June and then battered off-and-on by flooding across burn scars was cleaning up Monday from another round of flash flooding in which a dozen people had to be rescued and many more were displaced from their homes.
"Hopefully by Thursday we get a little bit more of a break," Scott Overpeck, the National Weather Service's warning coordination meteorologist in Albuquerque, said Monday.
About 100 National Guard troops remained in the village of Ruidoso, about 150 miles southeast of Albuquerque, on Monday after helping with rescues the day before. Video posted on social media showed rivers of water flowing down streets and forcing the closure of several roads.
With a flash flood watch in effect for parts of central and south-central New Mexico on Monday into Tuesday, the troops helped to distribute sandbags and with road repair, said Danielle Silva, director of communications for the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
About 45 people who had been displaced from their homes spent the night in a state-funded temporary shelter, she said.
There have been no immediate reports of deaths or serious injury from any of the flooding incidents in the village of 8,000. But Ruidoso city spokesperson Kerry Gladden said about 200 homes have been destroyed by flooding since the June wildfires damaged or destroyed an estimated 1,400 structures.
The FBI said Monday the fires were human-caused and two people may be to blame.
The mountain resort village, which sees its population triple in the summer when tourists flock there to escape the heat, suffered a major economic blow on Monday. The popular Ruidoso Downs horse track announced flood damage was forcing all races to be moved to Albuquerque for the rest of the summer.
"We hate it because we know it's going to have an economic impact on this area," Ruidoso Downs General Manager Rick Baugh said Monday. "But we've got to do it."
Baugh said they had no choice but to make the move for safety reasons after the torrent of rain and flood waters that hit the track on Sunday compromised the integrity of the culverts and bridges.
"This area has never experienced this kind of flooding," he said in a video posted on the track's website Monday morning. "You can't beat Mother Nature. You just can't. She showed us yesterday who's in control."
Overpeck said most of the recent flash flooding has been triggered by at least an inch (2.5 centimeters) of rain in a short period of time, but only about one-half inch (1.2 cm) caused the latest round in Ruidoso on Sunday.
"It just goes to show you exactly what can really happen in these types of situations when you get just enough rainfall in the wrong places at the wrong time," he said Monday about the areas burned by the wildfires.
Overpeck said he knew the horse track's decision to shut down for the rest of the summer was a difficult one, but was the best decision for public safety.
The wildfires that broke out in late June in the Sacramento Mountains west of Ruidoso, about 115 miles (185 kilometers) northeast of Las Cruces, killed two people and burned more than 12 square miles (31 square kilometers) in the community.
The FBI said on Monday that a man and woman may be linked to a vehicle seen fleeing from at least five other wildfires near the village of Ruidoso over a six-week span.
Of the 19 fast-flood emergencies since June 19 on the South Fork Fire and Salt Fire burn scar areas, Ruidoso has been included in 13 of them.
More than $6 million in federal assistance has been allotted to the region after President Joe Biden declared the region a major disaster area on June 20.
Climate change is bringing more deadly heat to New Mexico — Hannah Grover, New Mexico Political Report
This story was originally published by New Mexico Political Report.
Heat-related deaths and illnesses are increasing in New Mexico, as the state has experienced greater increases in temperature than many other parts of the country.
During an interim legislative committee on Monday in Albuquerque, a series of panelists spoke about climate change, its impacts on New Mexicans and what the state is doing to mitigate these effects.
“Every summer, New Mexicans are dying preventable deaths,” Nathaniel Matthews-Trigg, a founding board member of Healthy Climate New Mexico, said. “It’s time we shift our focus from individual actions to collective community efforts. Only by working together can we dismantle the barriers that have left so many of our communities at risk.”
Lauren Reichelt, the director of the Environmental Health Division at the New Mexico Environment Department, said there has been a dramatic rise in the number of emergency department visits in the state caused by heat stress since 2010. In fact, nearly twice as many people sought help for heat-related illness in 2022 as did in 2010. The majority of patients seeking help due to heat stress are between 18 and 44 years old.
In 2010, about 200 people sought care at emergency departments for heat-related illness. In 2022, that number was about 400. Last year, there were 900 emergency department visits related to heat. And, this year, already more than 600 people have gone to the emergency department because of heat.
Reichelt said those numbers are likely lower than the actual amount of patients visiting emergency departments due to heat. That’s because not all of the visits that are related to heat are recorded as being caused by temperatures.
She explained that heat can cause a variety of other health conditions including kidney, heart and respiratory problems.
Reichelt then spoke about heat stroke and how it affects the human body. She said blood is diverted from the body’s core to the skin in an effort to cool the body down. That leads to not enough blood flowing through the gut, causing the gut to begin leaking.
“The immune response is catastrophic and targets the organs, resulting in destruction of multiple organs, which is not how we want our workers to die,” she said.
Reichelt said that long-term heat exposure increases the risk of kidney disease in agricultural workers.
To combat those risks of heat-related illness, Reichelt said workers should be given frequent, short breaks and provided with cool rooms, water and electrolytes. She said a buddy system should also be used because a person suffering from heat stress may not know that they need to rest and get out of the heat.
Matthews-Trigg said some of the vulnerable populations include socially-isolated individuals, people with chronic medical conditions, senior citizens, children, pregnant people and people who do not have access to cooling in their workplaces.
“Each group faces unique challenges, from language barriers to act to lack of health care, access, discrimination and economic hardships,” he said. “There’s no one size fits all solution to this issue. Instead, we need targeted strategies that address the specific barriers that each of these groups face.”
Currently, he said the National Weather Service issues heat advisories which are often distributed by local media. But the infrastructure is not always in place to help people access shelter, he said.
“Telling someone to get somewhere cooler if they don’t have access to transportation, is pointless,” he said. “Setting up cooling centers that are not welcoming, that don’t allow pets or are in inaccessible locations will mean that the people that need them are unable to go to them.”
David DuBois, the state climatologist, said that New Mexico is becoming hotter and more arid due to climate change.
He presented a map that shows how temperatures have changed nationwide from 1971 to 2021.
“There are some areas that are warming faster than other areas, and New Mexico is one of those, or is warming faster than other parts of the United States,” he said.
New Mexico could experience a statewide average increase of 5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050, he said.