Ruidoso and Las Vegas are two very different communities, but when it comes to environmental disasters, they’re topping the charts these days.
Ruidoso just experienced a horrific flash flood that swept away two young children and a middle-aged man. My heart goes out to the families of these lost loved ones, and to a community that hadn’t fully recovered from its last catastrophe, last year’s South Fork and Salt wildfires, which claimed two other lives, burned over 25,000 acres and forced the evacuation of the entire village.
Likewise, Las Vegas fell victim to the largest wildfire in state history in 2022, the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon wildfire in 2022, which burned 341,471 acres and destroyed 900 structures. Then, in June 2024, torrential rains caused the Gallinas River to overflow its banks, contaminate the city’s reservoirs and flood the low-lying areas of the city along the river.
It is a cruel reality that wildfires leave burn scars, and burn scars don’t retain water. Both Ruidoso and Las Vegas have fallen victim to this one-two punch of fire and water, leaving both communities to pick up the pieces and try to return to some semblance of normalcy — as if normalcy will ever again be possible.
Ruidoso is a mountain resort community that, coupled with its next-door neighbors, Ruidoso Downs and the Mescalero Apache Reservation, offers horseracing, skiing, camping and much more, attracting deep-pocketed Texans and Mexicans to the area year-round. Needless to say, the fires and floods have damaged more than the environment; the local economy has been hit hard, and it will take millions of dollars in state and federal assistance to stage a comeback.
Las Vegas, on the other hand, has seen its local economy going downhill for years now. Water has been a central concern for decades, with a limited water supply — mainly, the Gallinas River, a small but important tributary to the Pecos River —limiting the city’s overall growth. Now, three years after the Hermit’s Peak fire, people are leaving and businesses are closing.
But this community “where the Great Plains meets the Mighty Rockies” still has plenty of life left in it. Three colleges — New Mexico Highlands University, Luna Community College and the international school, the United World College of the American West — keep this historically rich community young enough for a comeback of its own.
As for the continuing fire-and-water threats these two towns face, there’s only so much we can do. We can’t do much about the weather. Here in New Mexico, it’s going to get hotter and drier as the earth continues to warm, and extreme weather events are going to hit more often, with vulnerable communities like Ruidoso and Las Vegas taking the brunt of it all.
As advanced as we’ve become technologically, humanity is still a long way from an ability to “control” the weather (although it is within the realm of possibility), so we’d best get our homes and communities ready for extreme weather. Better to look beyond a 100-year flood plain and face the reality that the next 100 years will not be like the last 100 years.
It doesn’t help to have a vindictive climate-change denier in the White House, but that’s the hand we’re dealt, so we’d better figure out some work-arounds. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is right to be thinking outside the federal box, but it will take a lot more than progressive state policies to mitigate a brighter future.
It will take a village like Ruidoso, and a city like Vegas, to rise from the ashes and the muck to become vibrant communities once again — and show the rest of us how it’s done.
Tom McDonald is editor and publisher of the Guadalupe County Communicator in Santa Rosa and the New Mexico Community News Exchange (CNEx). He can be reached at tmcdonald.usa@gmail.com