RUIDOSO, N.M. (KTSM) – People from near and beyond Ruidoso galvanized all week to support residents and business owners devastated by the deadly flash floods on Tuesday, July 8.
“It’s an impressive community. I’ve seen neighbors helping neighbors with people, animals, elderly, water, food. So that’s the community, and it’s impressive. It’s not everywhere. It’s a disaster that brings the people together,” said Wendy Ansel, who lives in the Hondo Valley in Lincoln County.
Ansel said that while her home barely escaped the devastating impact of Tuesday’s flood, she has been helping a friend from the Ruidoso Downs area whose home was caught in the powerful flood.
“(Her home) has 4 feet of mud all around it and it was moved off of its foundation. So, there’s no piping and there’s no electricity,” Ansel said.
Ansel shared these words as she picked up three 24-count cases of water from a makeshift donation set-up along Billy the Kid Trail on Saturday, July 12.
The donation area was made up of tents that were set up by a truck club out of Roswell, named Team Diablos. The club gathered hundreds of donations that included clothing, blankets, hygiene products, food, and water.
The club handed the donations out to people impacted by the flood, or people like Ansel who were helping their neighbors. The brains behind the effort was one of the club’s own, who was born and raised in Ruidoso.
“It’s just been sad that you know. We’ve pretty much had a fire almost every year. I get emotional seeing people that I grew up with, and adults that saw us grow up lose everything,” said Alejandra Mendoza, the wife of the truck club’s president, Edgar Gutierrez.
The club’s donation tents were spotted by a man travelling from Pomona, California with about 50 cases of water. The man, Joe Rangel, said he and his wife were in route to Kerrville, Texas to help with their flood relief efforts, when he said a friend of his who lives near Ruidoso told him the Village was also devastated by a flood.
Rangel said there was no complicated explanation as to why he would jump in his car a travel over 12 hours using vacation hours from work.
“It’s just something that needs to be done. I mean, everybody needs help once in a while. I mean on our part, we have everything we can have. Thank God. And the people here, I’ve been watching them and there are a lot of people bringing cases of water,” Rangel said.
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