Two wildfires continued to burn in southern New Mexico on Thursday despite heavy rain a day earlier, forcing firefighters in the mountains around the village of Ruidoso to contend with a disorienting mix of raging flames and rushing floods.
The fast-moving fires have killed two people, burned hundreds of homes and prompted thousands of evacuations. More rain was expected on Thursday night, and though it was helping to control the blazes it also introduced a new danger: flash flooding from overflowing creeks.
Already, much of the land around Ruidoso has been either saturated by rain or scarred by fire, which has made the flooding even worse, sending muddy water, heavy with forest debris, rushing across the landscape.
“It really only takes one bad storm over a burn scar to produce this kind of catastrophic flooding,” Andrew Mangham, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque, said on Thursday.
The wildfires, named the South Fork and Salt fires, began amid sweltering temperatures this week and were not at all contained as of midday Thursday. Together, they have burned more than 23,000 acres. The South Fork fire, the larger of the two, has burned more than 16,000 acres and destroyed 1,400 structures, according to local officials.
About 500 of those structures were believed to be homes, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico said at a news conference on Wednesday night, adding that the damage made the fires among the most devastating in the state’s history.
“It is heartbreaking to look at what our landscape looks like after a fire moves through it,” Kerry Gladden, a spokeswoman for Ruidoso, said on Thursday. “Such a thing of beauty now has whole mountain sides that are covered with charred trees.”
She added that debris-filled floodwater from nearby mountains could pose a big risk if it were to flow into the village because “it can hit bridges and pile up and the bridges can give way.”
The two people who died were found on Tuesday in or near Ruidoso, according to the New Mexico State Police. One 60-year-old man was found on the side of a road near a motel with burns, the police said. The other victim was found in the driver’s seat of a burned vehicle on a road.
Three flood rescues have also taken place, and several people remain unaccounted for, said Ms. Lujan Grisham, who had earlier declared a state of emergency in Lincoln County, which includes Ruidoso, and the Mescalero Apache Reservation because of the fires.
Ruidoso, a popular resort spot surrounded by forested slopes, usually brings tens of thousands of visitors during peak seasons. But the streets downtown on Thursday were eerily empty, and most of the traffic was from the local authorities. There were wafts of smoke in some areas and the smell of singed wood in the air.
About 8,000 residents have evacuated, according to the New Mexico forestry division. Fire damage had knocked out communications infrastructure in Ruidoso, city officials said, and emergency officials had to work from a hub at a local fire station.
The situation remained unpredictable, and the fires could still reach the downtown area. “With the wind shift,” said Ms. Gladden, the Ruidoso spokeswoman, “anything can happen.”
On Thursday, firefighters’ main focus was on protecting structures and keeping the flames from reaching the village, said David Shell, a spokesman for the officials in command of the fire. He said it could be a week or more before the evacuated residents could safely return.
Residents described frantic evacuations earlier in the week. Steven Jongeward, 55, a business owner in Ruidoso, found shelter at the La Quinta hotel after he fled his home on Monday with his mother and a neighbor. He said he had seen the flames in the distance, pointing to a nearby mountaintop. “It was desperate on that day,” he said. “The scene was chaos.”
By Thursday, Mr. Jongeward was watching the yellow state flag as it flapped in the breeze in front of the hotel. “That flag over there lets me know when the wind shifts,” he said. “Right now I’m happy to see that the wind is kind of calm. But the minute that flag is waving and pointed toward the hotel, that’s not good.”
Gabrielle Antoine, 34, a desk manager at the La Quinta, said that she had decided to stay behind to help keep the hotel open for firefighters and others who needed refuge. But she said that she was worried about running out of gas and other supplies. “There’s no food to get at stores,” she said on Wednesday.
Temperatures had reached the upper 80s and 90s in southern New Mexico on Wednesday before a storm dumped torrential rain in the Ruidoso area in the afternoon, with some areas receiving 2.5 inches of rain in a half-hour, according to the Weather Service, which declared a flash flood emergency during the downpour.
That prompted officials in Ruidoso to pause operations in certain areas near the fire. “As the units and crews leave these areas,” the officials said on social media, “they will be evacuating anyone that is still in the area to higher ground.” Earlier, firefighters in air tankers and helicopters dropped water and retardant on the flames, while firefighters on the ground constructed firelines.
The Red Cross said on Wednesday that more than 528 people had sought refuge at nine emergency shelters, and that hundreds of meals and snacks had been provided to them. The organization said that it was also providing emotional support, relief supplies and health services, and that more disaster workers were on the way.
The South Fork fire was discovered around 9 a.m. Monday in the Mescalero Apache tribal area. The Salt fire was discovered a few miles away in the afternoon and has since burned more than 7,000 acres of tribal land in mostly inaccessible mountain terrain.
Reporting was contributed by Derrick Bryson Taylor, Victor Mather and Aimee Ortiz.
