Posted on 07/28/2008 7:01:51 AM PDT by CedarDave
Emergency personnel evacuated about 700 people from Ruidoso and Ruidoso Downs early Sunday as the rain-swollen Rio Ruidoso overwhelmed several bridges in town, coursed over roads, damaged homes and stranded dozens of campers in the area.
(Excerpt) Read more at abqjournal.com ...
TV pictures show Air National Guard rescues of campers, FD rescue from flooded homes, and houses washed down stream and breaking up.
I’m not in Ruidoso and I’m not in a place that will flood but I would love for it to stop raining! We went 9 months with no measurable rain and have had almost 10 inches starting on the 4th of July.
My son was in Ruidoso this weekend and the main road was a river.
I was looking at the pictures. Why was a pic of Obama placed between them? He doing rescues too?
As of last night, they were still in the process of evacuating many campers who were stranded in the mountains. The roads to these campers are no longer there.
KRQE reports the jockey’s tack room was flooded, maybe destroyed, including saddles and other gear. Horses were rescued and are o.k.
Just a note, Ruidoso (ree-uh-do-so) means noisy. The Rio Ruidoso is aptly named. Normally it is calm, but it is named for the way it comes alive during spring runoff. This is from the City of Ruidoso’s visitor’s site.
He’s “The One,” don’t ya know?
Love the comment about people encroaching on nature in the article. Morons. Nature is everywhere. One cannot encroach upon something that completely surrounds us.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
It's been so many years since we've been there, I've forgotten.
Yes, it’s near there. Never been to Ruidoso or the Inn, though. We’ve been in NM for just over 3 years and have mostly stayed in the NW NCentral part of the state. We are getting out more now and are wanting to get down to Lincoln and Carlsbad and the site of Al the Gore’s inarticulate conception (Roswell).
Just to let you know what happened from my end.
The original story was excerpted to under 300 words according to FR rules and properly linked. Apparently the ABQ Journal yanked the story and replaced with a series of updates at the same link.
For the information of all, the original story is back up together with pictures and a link to updates. The ABQ Journal is subscription but you can get to the story for free and without registering; just follow the instructions.
300 words is not a magic number. For example if an article requiring excerpting was 275 words long, and if 300 words was the limit, it would follow that one could post the entire 275 word article. That of course would be copyright bypass and not permitted here.
A good rule of thumb is to remove at least half of the article if it contains less than 600 words and if excerpting is required. If the article is 600 words or more, removing all but 300 words is a good start at an excerpt.
Heck, it wasn’t until 6:30 PM yesterday evening that I even knew that there was any flooding..... Even though the rescue helicopter is staging right across the street from my house.
That’s what I get for only getting my news off the internet.... and XM radio when I go out in one of the vehicles.
Every year they have the EMS convention here, and have helicopters and emergency vehicles doing the same thing for practice as they are doing now, so I just figured that’s what was going on now.
Then I drove over to the store and noticed that Cedar Creek had piled up tree trunks and branches and rail road ties (landscaping... We don’t have a railroad here ;-) all over the road. That was my first real clue that anything unusual was going on. As I was leaving the store, the news on XM’s “America Right” channel mentioned the flooding, so that was kind of a surprise.
I think we had more rain, and it fell faster in the flood we had in ‘63... although a lot more people are effected and more property damage and bridges washed out this time.
More silly people building right on the river and creeks is why. Of course they have already filled up everything else that isn’t a 60 degree or steeper slope, and everyone in Texas and half the rich people in Mexico think they have to own a Ruidoso vacation home, so they build anywhere there is two hundred square feet of land available.
I haven’t had a chance to go out and look around town... I may not even try, just to stay out of everyones way.
I've always taken a contrarian view on the name: My thesis is that it is a mis-spelling and a misinterpretation: It should be Rio De Oso; River of Bear... there are normally a lot more bears along the river than there is noise. ;-)
Well, it could be a combination of both. Noise from those encountering the bears...
Hmmm. You may be right ;-)
Hope everyone down there is okay, we’re praying for you guys up here.
Hubbard (the racetrack owner) has been threatening to close the track and move it elsewhere if the Legislature doesn't give him some special tax breaks and some other stuff.
Just between you and me, I think he is just trying to coerce the Village(s), the County and the State into approving some more of his real estate developments and golf courses that will have a detrimental effect on the community, the infrastructure and the environment.
So, a lot of people were already worried about the local economy.
Personally, I'd like it if the race track was closed for good and about 90% of the people here leave.
Track condition, poor...
I did get out and look around a bit.
Driving through the main parts of town, other than some mud, gravel and other detritus washed across the roads, one would would never know there was anything out of the ordinary.
The tourist traps in midtown are very crowded and busy, especially for a non-holiday Monday, which is usually the quietest day of the week for them.
The ‘main’ bridge over the river at Sudderth and Mechem is just fine. That’s the only really critical bridge for the general operation of the town and for those just passing through.
The Upper Canyon is inaccessible from the first bridge above the ‘roundy round’. That’s going to really hurt the most people, as there is no other way in or out of there other than by foot or by air.
Paradise Canyon (Parasite Gulch as some of us old timers call it) is open, although some of the private drives across Cedar Creek are gone. The main bridge, just before the steep hill up to Sudderth drive is OK, although they have built sort of a coffer dam just above it, and there is some water running across the road
The upper Cedar Creek road is open all the way to the top, a few private drives across the creek are washed out, and there are a few places where the edges of the main road are crumbling, so you have to drive carefully, especially if there is someone driving the other way.
The Gavilan Canyon ‘bridge’ (culverts, actually) is gone... again... That’s the third time in three years. They just finished rebuilding it from last year, a couple of months ago. They spend more and more money on that every time, with worse and worse engineering., and make it lower every time as well. Fortunately, it is only a ‘convenience’ bridge, and no one HAS to use it.
I didn’t go down to the Downs, but talked to one guy that lives down along the river there. He didn’t get flooded, and his bridge is still up, although he is a little worried about it.
All in all, the town is far from devastated, although a lot of people who live right along the river and some of the creeks are hurting. They are going to have to do a lot of cleanup at best, total losses for some of the trailers and some of the real houses and condos.
Other than some of the residential areas all along the river, and some of the motels and inns in the Upper Canyon, (and the Race Track, as Cedar Dave’s photos show) it is pretty much ‘Business as Usual’ and a little inconvenience of not being able to take the back ways to stay off the main roads for 90% of town.
I didn’t take any photos, or explore as much as I’d liked to have done, as my invalid mother just had to come with me, and I couldn’t leave her in the car in order to to do anything interesting.
We went to golf there. BEAUTIFUL mountain course if you're into golf!
No, actually it is pretty much the natural river bed there, despite how it looks on the map. It WAS a little straighter there before the flood in the early ‘60s, but that did some weird things to the river bed from mid town all the way to halfway to Roswell, . ( I think 63, but it might have been ‘61,’62 or possibly, 64).
There was nothing in that area on the north side of the river back then, and nothing in Gavilan Canyon itself, other than a gravel pit, one house, a horse corral and one trailer house. SO, it is really only the bridge engineering that is lousy... They haven’t been ‘terraforming’ there, despite appearances
We’ve been out of town, but I graduated from RHS and was stunned to see this on the news! Unfortunately I was FreeRepublicless!
susie
It’s up Carrizo Canyon Road (we lived on the road when it was originally being constructed. My grandfather cursed them because the dam created issues for the water for his trout fishing lake).
susie
LOL
One reason we won’t retire there (altho my husband was raised in Ruidoso and I lived there for part of HS) is the glut of people. Maybe if they would leave we WOULD come back! Right now we are considering something closer to Lincoln or the Penasco River near Cloudcroft (I may have spelled that wrong).
susie
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