New Mexico
Only one person still ‘unaccounted for’ following destructive Ruidoso wildfires • Source New Mexico
As Jesus Cadena sat on his front porch in Ruidoso, smoking cigarettes and watching the helicopters and airplanes drop water over the South Fork Fire, he had no way of knowing that according to New Mexico State Police he was officially unaccounted for in a disaster.
Cadena and his family are one of thousands who reunited during the hours after the South Fork and Salt fires tore through neighborhoods and forest in southeastern New Mexico. A list of unaccounted people that has grown and shrunk since the fires ignited on June 17 now sits at one, officials with the Village of Ruidoso said on Wednesday.
Two people died in the fire.
Yesterday, officials reported that a list of 89 people it was aware of were “unaccounted for” were a priority to contact after the fires and floods.
Michael Scales, a Lincoln County emergency management specialist, told Source New Mexico that all people unaccounted for on the list given to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department were located by midday Wednesday.
Ruidoso police are still looking for the final person on the list.
Cadena’s reunite after evacuation orders separated family
Thousands of Ruidoso-area residents had to evacuate their homes and businesses last week, fleeing from the treacherous South Fork and Salt fires which continue to smolder.
But for some people, heartbreak was the first emotion they experienced as loved ones chose to stay behind.
Cyndi Cadena was one evacuee who had to leave an elderly parent behind in Ruidoso.
“I talked to my mom and dad and my mom tried to persuade my dad and he still didn’t want to leave,” she said.
Cadena takes care of her octogenarian parents in their Ruidoso home near the Walmart Supercenter. Isabel and Jesus Cadena built the cabin in the late 1970s and have lived in the Sacramento Mountain community since.
When the fire started last Monday, Cyndi Cadena said she talked with her brother who works for Mescalero Apache Telecom. As he saw the fires worsen, he told his family they needed to get out of the area.
Cyndi Cadena said the family was initially told to go to the senior center in Ruidoso Downs, but then they were directed farther away to Roswell.
“We were finding out that Roswell was getting full and there’s no place to stay,” she said.
Members of the family were able to eventually find space in Roswell, but Cyndi and her parents stayed, trying to help other elderly community members navigate the chaos at the senior center.
“I was trying to help, you know, because everyone needed help,” Cyndi said.
The three Cadenas remained in the area into the early Tuesday morning hours.
Jesus Cadena did not want to leave. Several hours later he was running low on oxygen.
Cyndi Cadena said as the smoke settled in the sky, the chaos seemed to calm a bit, so she took her parents back to their home and got her father hooked up to his home ventilator. This gave her a chance to grab several more things from the house, let her parents rest and feed them.
Around 7:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, she said she was ready to take them all down the mountain through Hondo, to Roswell and eventually safety. After trying to persuade her father again, she closed the windows, sealed up the house and left with her mother.
“I said ‘let’s go mom, we gotta go’ and I hugged my dad and I just went out the door and prayed,” she said through tears.
Her brother-in-law stayed behind to take care of the older Cadena and look in on other elderly residents who did not want to leave Ruidoso.
The Cadena women traveled over and around northern Ruidoso and made their way to Alamogordo where they stayed with family until Thursday. Because internet and cellular service was down back home, they had no way of communicating with the family that stayed.
She called hotlines dedicated to reuniting people during the fire, asking if anyone knew if her father was still in Ruidoso. Her calls placed Jesus Cadena on a list of officially unaccounted for people that emergency responders tracked during fires and floods.
Cyndi Cadena also called New Mexico State Police for a welfare check, which revealed that her father and brother-in-law were still at the family house.
The family’s concerns were calmed last Thursday during a Facetime call with Jesus Cardena.
“My mom got to see him so they were sentimental and everything,” Cyndi Cadena said about her parents talking through the phone.
She said it gave her mother some comfort to be able to at least see her husband, who still refused to leave Ruidoso because he wanted to wait for the rain that followed.
The family remained separated until Sunday evening, June 23 when evacuation orders were lifted and residents were able to return to their homes and assess the damage.
Cadena told Source New Mexico via text message that they were able to go to Ruidoso Downs where they all reunited.
The family home was untouched, but many other community members were not so lucky.
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NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – The Larry P. Abraham Agri-Nature Center in Los Ranchos was created to be a space for the community to share agricultural resources and learn. Now, Corrales wants in on the action.
“The Agri-Nature Center provides a lot for the community and provides valuable agricultural education, demonstration of agricultural techniques that work well in our environment in our climate, and helps support local businesses at the same time,” Agri-Nature Center Agricultural Program Director William Carleton said.
The center focuses on home-grown foods, sustainable farming, regenerative agriculture through food preservation, and education through hands-on learning. With programs like animal husbandry, water conservation, research into new agricultural technology, and growers’ markets.
“They have all these workshops, land set aside for certain type of gardens, agricultural activities, cooking, and we don’t currently have something like that here in Corrales,” Dean Sherer said with the Corrales Historical Society.
The goal is to educate people and get them involved in more sustainable practices of agriculture to promote more agricultural activities.
Both the Agri-Nature Center and the people in Corrales believe that if they can expand by adding more of these centers in the state, they can become hubs for more and more New Mexicans to get involved in and learn from. “The Agri-Nature Center serves the residents of Los Ranchos, but also people throughout the metro area and beyond,” Carleton said. “This past year, we served 46 different zip codes in New Mexico at our workshops and events.”
Two of their programs in particular have been so popular, they’re looking to expand them. Such as a community garden started this year. This is one of the programs Corrales is looking to replicate in its own community.
“There’s been so much positive feedback with the community garden, and the idea would be to expand plots,” Carleton said. “Right now we have 30, which filled up this year.”
Another popular program they’re looking to expand is a demonstration kitchen, which up until now has only been used for workshops. Going forward, they want to make the equipment available for people to use. Such as freeze-drying foods.
“I see it as a community resource for learning how important agriculture is for us in New Mexico, and if we can sustain it in a better way, if we can learn new techniques to help our gardens grow better and larger,” Sherer said.
This morning temperatures have fallen into the low 40s in Albuquerque with mostly clear skies. Today, mild to warm high temperatures are expected in New Mexico with sunshine throughout most of the day in the Duke City before bit more cloud coverage comes in from the west. In addition, an approaching upper-level low pressure system will push into western New Mexico and southern Colorado this afternoon bringing the return of rainfall and mountain snow.
Western New Mexico is expected to experience showers and the potential for storms, while higher elevations in southwest Colorado, and parts of the northern mountains, will experience snowfall. The National Weather Service (NWS) will issue a Winter Weather Advisory in La Plata County and a portion of the San Juan Mountains from 3 pm today until 8 am on Monday. This will be primarily for gusty winds and the accumulating snowfall in higher elevations. This storm system will also bring breezy to windy conditions across the state today and primarily to the central mountain chain on Monday.
After tomorrow, another low-pressure system will move through on Thursday of this week. A surge of moisture will accompany that storm system and bring additional rainfall and mountain snow to the Land of Enchantment and southern Colorado. Moisture ahead of that system will also bring more rain chances across the region on Tuesday and Wednesday. High temperatures will also continue to drop through this week. Have a great Sunday!
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