'You will be touched.' Ruidoso prepares for more storms and flooding - Algernon D'Ammassa, Albuquerque Journal
“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 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.”
Two internet service providers to resume work in Albuquerque - Gregory R.C. Hasman, Albuquerque Journal
The city of Albuquerque will be lifting stop-work orders for two fiber internet service providers on Monday.
The city placed Ezee Fiber and Vexus Fiber under the orders earlier in the year after it received complaints that included workers leaving yards damaged, working outside normal hours, blocking driveways and busting sidewalks.
In at least one instance, the city said Ezee Fiber hit a gas line, the Journal reported.
City inspectors went out and made sure all of the incomplete work had been finished, Department of Municipal Development spokesperson Dan Mayfield said.
“We’re happy to give you a permit, but you have to clean up the yards you messed up first before we give you a new permit,” he said.
Vexus Fiber and Ezee Fiber did not respond to requests for comment.
In May, the city council adopted a resolution establishing a working group — consisting of the city, installers, state public regulation commission and utility companies — and temporarily suspending new development permits as the working group reviewed the situation.
The city used information that was discussed during the review — along with comments from public meetings — to come up with new rules for constructing fiber internet infrastructure, he said.
“We made sure we made the rules the right way,” Mayfield said.
Some of the rules include requiring installers to work during regular working hours, clearly state what companies they work for, provide proof neighbors were notified that work was starting, and set deadlines for dealing with complaints.
“We are making sure these companies are overall being a better neighbor in our city by being more organized, providing better oversight of their contractors, and addressing all resident complaints more quickly and thoroughly,” city broadband program manager Catherine Nocolaou said in a news release.
New Mexico counties say state owes them millions for incarceration costs - Austin Fisher, Source New Mexico
Two officials representing county governments say the State of New Mexico owes local governments millions of dollars for unreimbursed jail expenses.
But while lawmakers passed legislation in 2007 requiring the state to reimburse county jails for incarcerating state prisoners, officials contend the state has not made sufficient contributions.
For instance, according to a recent presentation to the interim legislative Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee by Grace Phillips, risk management director for the New Mexico County Insurance Authority, between June 2023 and July 2024, the 25 counties with jails spent $383 million on operations, but only received $4.6 million in reimbursement from the state — approximately 1.2% — of the cost.
Phillips characterized that amount as “puny” and said it only covers half the cost resulting from detaining people who are in the legal custody of the Corrections Department.
Over the past seven years, this “state reimbursement shortfall” has totaled more than $45.3 million, according to the presentation.
Phillips said the gap between what the state is legally obligated to pay and what the Legislature has set aside “has really gotten out of control.”
“The cost of detention is staggering when you think about what county budgets are like as opposed to the state,” she said. “We’re much smaller than the state, and we spend an extraordinary proportion of that budget on detention facilities.”
Katherine Carroll, a lobbyist for the nonprofit NM Counties, told the committee that over the last five years, her organization has been unable to gain any traction with lawmakers about increasing reimbursements.
Carroll said she has raised the concerns with Legislative Finance Committee staff over the last couple of years, but by the end of each legislative session, they tell her “there’s just not enough money there to reimburse the counties for housing state inmates.”
The Legislature passed the county jail reimbursement law shortly after the New Mexico Court of Appeals sided with San Miguel County in a lawsuit against the Corrections Department. The court said the state must pay when someone in its custody is held in a local jail, even if the Legislature’s appropriation to the Corrections Department provided insufficient funds for doing so.
Committee Chair Sen. Joseph Cervantes (D-Las Cruces) pushed back at Carroll’s contention that staff told her the state had insufficient funds for reimbursement:
“Nobody elected the staff,” he said. “They elected us, and they elected the governor who passed a law that says you’re supposed to get reimbursed, and you don’t get reimbursed. So who made the staff king? I don’t understand that.”
So if the state isn’t going to reimburse the counties, Cervantes contended, lawmakers should change the law to reflect that, or the counties should sue to enforce the law as it stands.
“I would tell you to sue — maybe that’s the callous attitude of a lawyer, but we have courts and we have the law for a reason,” he said. “When you say ‘owed,’ are you planning to do something about this? Or is it just to make us feel bad for you?”
Carroll told Cervantes her organization has been discussing the possibility of litigation for the past year, but had hoped the presentation to the committee might trigger lawmakers’ assistance.
“Other than that, I guess the counties would have to look at a second lawsuit regarding this issue,” she said.