SANTA FE (AP) – Douglas Siddens’ mother was among those who made it out with just the clothes on her back when a deadly, wind-fueled wildfire ripped through a mountain community in southern New Mexico.
The RV park where she lived was reduced to “metal frame rails and steel wheels,” said Siddens, who managed the site.
“I had like 10 people displaced. They lost their homes and everything, including my mom,” he said.
The fire has destroyed more than 200 homes and killed two people since it broke out Tuesday near the village Ruidoso, a vacation spot that draws thousands of tourists and horse racing fans every summer.
Hundreds of homes and summer cabins dot the surrounding mountainsides. The RV park that Siddens managed is near where an elderly couple was found dead this week outside their charred residence.
Elsewhere in the U.S., crews have been battling large fires this week in Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado, where a new blaze forced evacuations Friday along the Rocky Mountain’s eastern front near Lyons about 18 miles north of Boulder.
That fire was burning in the Blue Mountains near the Larimer-Boulder county line about 20 miles southeast of Estes Park, the east entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park.
In New Mexico, power was restored to all but a few hundred customers, but evacuation orders for close to 5,000 people remained in place.
It was a decade ago that fire ripped through part of the village of Ruidoso, putting the vacation spot on the map with the most destructive wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history when more than 240 homes burned and nearly 70 square miles (181 square kilometers) of forest were blackened by a lightning-sparked blaze.
On Friday, Mayor Lynn Crawford was rallying heartbroken residents once again as firefighters tried to keep wind-whipped flames from making another run at the village. She said the response from their neighbors has been amazing.