Soil damage from the South Fork and Salt wildfires has hindered rainfall absorption in the alpine resort town of Ruidoso, upending recovery efforts.
Video filmed July 9 shows a torrent of muddy water gushing down the road in Ruidoso, N.M. , and it doesn’t require a lot of rainfall to produce a flash flood. Tuesday’s deluge isn’t the first Ruidoso has encountered: Evacuation orders were issuedBjorn Adolpho, a 36-year-old construction worker, was working on a job replacing wooden retaining walls destroyed by the wildfires in a Ruidoso neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon.
He was returning from lunch shortly after 1 p.m. when it began to rain. Within minutes, he said, he could see water cascading down the mountainside across burned-out areas. Unable to return to the job site as the roads became slick with mud, he backtracked through the village to a crossing where he was stopped by floodwaters.A torrent of muddy water gushed down the road toward a narrow bridge, filled with railway ties and other construction debris.
The time between the start of the rainfall and the flash flooding was about a half-hour, he estimated. With no time to react, he left his tools on the job site. He also saw a man rescued from a home where he had been trapped with his dog. Adolpho was relieved to learn later that the man was okay.and to move to higher ground. No injuries were reported.
Adolpho, a Hawaii native, has lived in the area about seven years with his wife and four children. He applied for a job as a maintenance worker for the log cabin homes that are normally rented by summer tourists, but they are all empty after the fires and the floods.
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