Victims of last year's catastrophic Calf Canyon/Hermit's Peak fire have waited months for federal compensation.
Although nearly $4 billion was appropriated by Congress for the compensation program, only a small percentage of that has been paid out.
The Legislative Finance Committee got an update on Tuesday from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.
"We've received over 1,800 Notices of Loss to date," said Angela Gladwell, director of the claims office dealing with fire victims. "And that number continues to rise daily. We have paid over $27 million in claims."
She said although the rules for claims still are not finalized, the office hopes to pay out more in the coming months
FEMA's target is to pay $50 million to claimants by October of this year, $100 million by the end of the calendar year, over $1 billion by January of 2025.
That is still only about a quarter of what was appropriated.
State Rep. Harry Garcia (D-Bernalillo, Cibola, McKinley, San Juan, Socorro & Valencia) said that in the real world people aren't getting the help they should, and many people are angry with FEMA for not helping sooner.
Looking to the future, the committee also heard from Ronojoy Sen of the Pew Charitable Trust, which conducted a nationwide study on wildfires.
"Wildfires are becoming bigger and more costly over time, the number of acres burned over the past five years is 68%, higher than the average of the previous three decades," he said.
States nationwide are having to budget more for firefighting, mitigation and recovery.
"We're just seeing budgets being stressed all over the country," Sen continued.
He advocated for New Mexico to make a realistic budget to cope with increased fire.
This story was updated to correct an error in the amount of money appropriated by Congress for federal compensation, and an error made by Gladwell in referring to 2024 rather than 2025 in her comments to the committee.
