Monsoon flooding fears build in New Mexico in face of stubborn wildfires

Jun. 18—State and federal officials delivered an urgent message Friday to residents still reeling from devastation caused by wildfire: Perilous floodwaters are coming; heed the warnings.

"I can't stress enough that everyone in danger from these floods needs to prepare to evacuate," New Mexico Homeland Security and Emergency Management Secretary David Dye said in an afternoon news conference with the governor on flood mitigation efforts and emergency preparations in the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon burn area.

"This will be a very difficult summer, with monsoon rains likely, and overcoming fire damage will take weeks and months," Dye said. "... You may be asked to evacuate several times over the next few months."

"We don't want anyone to panic. We're not panicked," Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said. "We recognize the risk here, and the potential for flooding is high."

The first monsoonal rains — up to half an inch — fell Thursday night over the burn in the Pecos River valley, dampening dry fuels in an active area of the fire that continues to frustrate crews' efforts to fully contain the massive blaze. Even heavier showers fell just west of the fire's edge.

The blaze is now 341,314 acres, with 72 percent containment. There are 2,442 personnel deployed to fight it, repair landscape damage caused by fire lines and continue to protect threatened homes.

Firefighters raced to save the historic Beatty's Cabin site in the Pecos Wilderness as the wildfire made a nearly 5,000-acre run Thursday ahead of the rains, jumping the upper Pecos River. It was the fire's third big run in the wilderness area this week.

Officials said higher humidity and rainfall from a shift in weather patterns is a welcome change for those battling flames on the fire's western edge. Still, the storms add new complexities to an already complicated burn.

Near Las Vegas, N.M., firefighters launched an attack Thursday on a lightning-sparked blaze.

Marcus Cornwell, an operations section chief for an incident management team assigned to the southern zone of the wildfire, said in a Friday briefing crews were prepared for more new fires to ignite from lightning brought by monsoonal storms.

Meteorologists on the incident management team forecast a fairly quiet Saturday but said chances for heavy downpours in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains are higher Sunday and could continue at least until Wednesday, driven by moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of California, and a storm system approaching from the Pacific Coast.

Jayson Coil, another operations section chief — one who has grown familiar with the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire in the last 2 1/2 months — said it is now "the most complex" it has been since it sparked.

Even as crews make headway on repairing fire lines built to contain the blaze — with work nearly completed on the southeastern side — they are bracing for the effects of flash flooding, mudslides and catastrophic debris flow as the monsoon settles in.

Among the concerns, Coil said, is the possibility of a situation requiring a swift-water rescue. Equipment is being prepared to address such an emergency.

Local public safety officials have been knocking on doors in rural neighborhoods at risk of flooding and handing out flyers to residents about evacuation preparations, emergency alert systems, shelters and escape routes — some of which could be washed out or destroyed by debris as floodwaters rush through.

"If you live in the flood plain or near the flood plain, you need to get ready," San Miguel County Sheriff Chris Lopez told residents in a Friday evening briefing.

"Our resources are prepared to come get you if you become trapped," Lopez said.

But, he added, residents also must take responsibility for their own safety. He made a plea for drivers to avoid traveling through water flowing across a roadway.

Federal and state agencies are delivering loads of sandbags residents can use to defend their homes and installing jersey barriers and other erosion-control and flood-prevention devices along waterways to slow the flow after heavy rains and to catch large debris, especially in an effort to protect the municipal watershed that serves Las Vegas and water system infrastructure.

Crews are working to replace damaged power lines and cell towers to ensure residents can receive weather alerts on their phones.

The New Mexico National Guard has readied aircraft and other resources for deployment if a need arises for emergency evacuations.

Perhaps most important, officials said in the governor's afternoon news conference, is a new state database of information on residents who have a disability or other limitation that might prevent them from fleeing a home or reaching high ground in time when danger emerges.

"We will help you right now," Lujan Grisham said. "My recommendation ... is if that's the situation for you, we should do this sooner rather than later."

She cited emergency shelters being set up at Peñasco High School, the Abe Montoya Recreation Center in Las Vegas and the Genoveva Chavez Community Center in Santa Fe.

Forecasting a potentially deadly flash flood is "not an exact science," Lujan Grisham said.

"As governor, I have been pushing this group of experts and others to make it an exact science. I want to know when, I want to know where, and I need it now," she said, adding, "That doesn't exist."

Elsewhere in New Mexico, the Midnight Fire burning near El Rito remained about 4,900 acres Friday, and containment had increased from just 16 percent to 69 percent.

Crews battling the Black Fire in the Gila Mountains increased containment to 50 percent. That blaze, the state's second largest in history, just behind the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, is now 324,132 acres — and growing.