Trees continued to smolder along U.S. Highway 70 as residents and officials assessed damage surrounding Ruidoso.
Kerry Gladden, public information officer for the village, asked for patience as some areas of town are still restricted to the public, even if they aren’t necessarily burned.
“We cannot allow people back in there until they've been swept by the strike canine teams for human remains. All of those places are considered crime scenes right now because this fire is under investigation. We just can't let that happen.”
And while the official cause of the fires is still under investigation, the FBI is asking for the public’s assistance in identifying the cause of the fires, offering $10,000 for, “information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for starting the fires.”
Michael Scales, the Emergency Management Specialist for Lincoln County's Office of Emergency Management, said he’s not expecting any imminent announcement regarding the investigation, and also said getting infrastructure back online for some areas of the town could take weeks.
“There's not going to be a whole lot of word [to] get out for a little [while]. We've really got a lot of damage assessment that needs to be done. We keep getting interrupted by something called Mother Nature, and [when] she sends a flood down the way, we've got to stop what we're doing,” he said. “We're still trying to get a total number of homes that are damaged or destroyed, [and] if there's any further damage to our infrastructure. We've had some damage to wells and electricity lost electricity. And a lot of the area lost their gas line. Telephone and fiber Internet is pretty well destroyed. So it's going to take a little bit of time to get back up and running with the folks coming back in.”
Authorities are urging residents to be wary of flash flooding that could be exacerbated by the burn scars, and ask that the public refrain from flying drones around damaged areas for the safety of emergency personnel as suppression operations continue.
Copyright 2024 KRWG
