![]() But people look likely to keep struggling for some time. The National Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers built flood defenses. ROYBAL-MACH: We are talking about generational land, people who live off the land - so filing suits for them to be made whole.įORDHAM: Meantime, there are things happening. She is unconvinced by the report the agency produced on the fire.ĪNTONIA ROYBAL-MACK: Basically it's we did everything wrong, but we do everything wrong all the time.įORDHAM: She wants to sue so that planned burn policy changes and locals like her own family get help. Either - well, like myself, I might have to get rid of half.įORDHAM: So during the wait to see if compensation will pass into law, local lawyer Antonia Roybal-Mack is preparing a mass tort case against the Forest Service. ![]() VELAZQUEZ: Well, I think there's a lot of us that are probably going to have to sell. VELAZQUEZ: This fire has really set us back - life-changing for sure.įORDHAM: His cows are now grazing land where he normally grows hay he'll need over the winter. A government report from 2003 documents lingering unpaid claims, and people here say they're in need now. Back in 2000, FEMA rebuilt a lot of homes, but two years on, some people were still living in trailers. It's passed the House and is on its way to the Senate. New Mexico lawmakers have managed to get similar legislation wrapped into the annual national defense bill. Back then, Congress passed a law that everyone affected would be fully compensated. In 2000, an escaped planned burn destroyed about 280 homes and damaged the Los Alamos National Laboratory. I actually wanted to sit and get a bucket of ashes from our house and send it to the Forest Service because they are accountable.įORDHAM: This isn't the first time the Forest Service allowed what was supposed to be a controlled burn to escape in New Mexico with devastating consequences. NARANJO: All of us are feeling the same grief and anger towards Forest Service that is so intense. NARANJO: Paying on their own, finding money.įORDHAM: And what angers her the most is that this fire, the Calf Canyon Hermits Peak fire, began as planned burns by the U.S. Bernice says lots of displaced people have been managing on their own. The agency says in this rural area, documentation is often an issue, and it encourages people to appeal rejections and call a hotline for legal aid. So with basic division, that's about $4,000 each. FEMA says it has given about $4 million to about 1,100 people. Initial estimates suggest hundreds of homes were lost. Bernice says she'd been spending time with her children lately, but it was their home. They say when they asked FEMA for help, the emergency agency denied them on the grounds the house wasn't their primary residence. When the fire came and we finally got to see our land that was demolished by the fire, it was so sad because the chokecherry tree was totally cut down.įORDHAM: Like many in this low-income area, they don't have insurance. NARANJO: I made some great jam, right? So that was a special treat. But on the other side of the mountains in the town of Espanola, I meet Bernice Naranjo and her husband Tito, who began renovating a centuries-old house in 1971.īERNICE NARANJO: From nothing building, that one little tiny room that was not even a room became a beautiful home.įORDHAM: She tells me about a lovely chokecherry tree there. And I'm just going to have to reassess all of that.įORDHAM: Anita and her husband had been working on a new house. So if I wanted to teach a class on papermaking, bam, I got my stuff. ROSS: I had a lot of supplies, but they were all categorized. ROSS: I had 30 years worth of every imaginable art supply in there.įORDHAM: She taught art to local kids as a volunteer. She shows me another pile of twisted junk, which was a studio. A breeze through the blackened trees shakes the charred tin. There's nothing left in there.įORDHAM: It was cute, she says, with her artwork and woven baskets. So right now I'm still feeding.įORDHAM: Nearby, in the forest, outside the town of Mora, I meet artist and teacher Anita Ross, and we look at the remains of a tin-roofed cabin, which was her home for 20 years.ĪNITA ROSS: Well, and there's literally just tin on the ground. VELAZQUEZ: I don't have a place to keep them on. I don't know what's going to happen.įORDHAM: The Forest Service has forbidden grazing to give the mountains a chance to recover after the fire. This year, those mountains are covered in burned patches. From our member station KUNM, Alice Fordham reports.ĪLICE FORDHAM, BYLINE: Rancher Peter Velazquez calls to about 20 cows and calves in a field next to his house.įORDHAM: That's expensive, especially at a time when the cattle would normally be grazing in the mountains that surround this verdant valley of the Mora River. So now people in the burned areas try to rebuild their lives. New Mexico's giant wildfire is all but out now.
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