Odessans with homes and property in Ruidoso are anxiously watching conditions as wildfires continue to ravage the area.
The South Fork Fire was discovered June 17 and has grown to 15,276 acres with 0 percent containment, causing the loss of about 1,400 structures and forcing the evacuation of about 8,000 people, according to the Ruidoso Municipal website.
“It is burning on Mescalero Tribal, U.S. Forest Service land, and areas around the Village of Ruidoso. The Salt Fire, also active, covers 5,557 acres on Mescalero Reservation. Both fires will be managed by a Complex Incident Management Team starting June 19,” the website said.
Former Odessa City Councilman James Goates said they evacuated the night of June 17. He has had a home in Ruidoso since 1981 and moved to his most recent home in Alto three years ago.
“It was bad, real bad, but luckily our home right now is still safe,” Goates said.
“I’m not so worried about our home, but I’m worried about a lot of other people. We’ve had friends that lost their homes; not second homes, their homes and that’s bad,” he added.
Goates said it has been extremely dry there and “fires can start.” He has been keeping track on a couple of different apps.
“It’s sad right now. Besides the fire, a lot of us were worried about what’s going to happen with insurance because I know two different people who can’t get insurance on their homes. You got to hope that you have enough money to get through it, because otherwise it’s going to be a mess,” Goates said.
There was rain in the forecast June 19, which Goates said he hopes will help.
“We saw the fire start almost. We happened to be at Albertsons, walked out of Albertsons, looked up I said, ‘Man, that’s not good. That’s where we’ve always worried about a fire coming from, hope they get that taken care of’ and then just literally right then four Indian guys run out of the store and say we’re being evacuated; we’ve got to go. That’s how fast it happened,” Goates said.
“That’s how we got started. The communication have not been that good, personally,” he added.
He said radio station 1490 has done the best job.
When Goates and his wife left, he said it was so smoky you could barely see.
“I’ve been up there a long time, so I knew some back roads and we were on a back road out of Alto over to Capitan and then we went another back road out of Capitan on the other side of the Sacramento Mountains, so where we went we had no traffic. If you went down Highway 70, they said it was crawling 30 miles an hour. Two to three different friends said it took them two to four hours, most of them about 3 hours, to make that 70 mile trip to Roswell,” he said.
“Right down that whole valley was full of smoke, so they never got out of the smoke until they got to Roswell. The way I went, it’s longer but we had no smoke. Honestly, as my wife says, ‘Well you pulled another Goates. You always figure out some crazy route. (We) didn’t have to live inside that smoke that everybody else did,’” Goates added.
He remembered the Little Bear Fire in 2012 and said 5,000 to 10,000 firefighters from all over the country and “almost all over the world” came in to fight it.
“That was bad, but it never really threatened Ruidoso,” Goates said. “It got all around the forest and Nogal and Angus and some of the little towns, but it was huge, it was a huge fire. We were there, so we’d collect water and take it to firefighters when they’d come in for that fire. It was so big and lasted so long, they evacuated at the elementary school. It looked like the military had taken over. It was huge,” Goates said.
This fire happened so fast, the firefighters who arrived were the ones who get there the fastest.
“They’re mostly from New Mexico and Arizona. They’re fighting fires all over that area, so it’s kind of tough. They had the helicopters running very quickly, taking water out of Grindstone Lake, but as you can see it got away from them. They couldn’t keep up. Now the big tankers are in dropping the retardant and the water. I don’t know how many of each, but there’s a lot of tankers flying and helicopters flying dropping water,” Goates said.
So far Wednesday morning, he’s heard 1,400 structures have burned, but at the same time they are being told they don’t know how many have burned and it’s too dangerous to get in some of the areas to count.
Businessman Austin Keith also has a home in Alto. He’s been watching the progress of the fires on an app called Watch Duty and there are three blazes going. He has had a home there since 2014. This morning one of the fires was close to his house.
“All the power’s cut off. I can’t look at my cameras or anything. It’s all sealed off, so we don’t know even if we’ll be able to go in, or if we’ll have something to go in to find. We’ve just got to pray for the firefighters and pray for those people that have already lost their homes and businesses up there,” Keith said.
He heard about the fires from an emergency contact site that Ruidoso has.
“They’ll start sending you text messages and calling you and leaving voicemails,” Keith said.
He said he’s worried about their home, but also about all the other people and businesses that are there.
“It’s a beautiful community, but you always worry about that. This time of year is an extreme fire danger because it’s the driest part of the year and it’s the warmest,” Keith said.
He added that you’ve just got to grin and bear it, see what’s going to happen and pray for the firefighters and people there.
“Everything’s material. … I heard there’s just been one fatality, but things are material and we can always redo things. But you can’t redo that forest for a long time, not in my (lifetime),” Keith said.
Matt Rist, marketing director for ICA, said the hotel has been evacuated and remains closed until further notice.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with Ruidoso,” Rist said.
He added that they have special evacuee rates at the MCM Elegante hotel in Lubbock and the MCM FunDome in Odessa.
Whitehouse Meat Market was expecting a church to come get about 50 hams for people in the affected area, store manager Rodney Garcia said.
Horses at Ruidoso Downs have been relocated to the state fairgrounds in Albuquerque, according to the Bloodhorse website.
Also, news reports have said Zia Park in Hobbs, N.M., and the Lea County Fairgrounds in Lovington have offered to stable horses.
