Four Corners Floods Empty 1,500 New Mexico Homes as Rescuers Pull Families Off Rooftops

Rescuers in northwest New Mexico spent Thursday night and Friday lifting people off their roofs. Days of heavy rain over the Colorado mountains sent the San Juan and Animas rivers over their banks and into Farmington, Bloomfield and the towns between them. San Juan County says about 1,500 homes have been evacuated and crews have carried out roughly 60 rescues, with more water still on the way (Albuquerque Journal; AP).

"We're picking people off of roofs and pulling people out of houses that have 3 or 4 feet of water in them, and there's more water coming," county spokesman Devin Neeley said. He added that the county's own sheriff was "d--- near going to lose his home today" (AP). No deaths had been reported as of Friday evening (Albuquerque Journal).

The flooding stretches across all four states that meet at the Four Corners. Colorado has about 1,000 families out of their homes. Arizona's piece of the Navajo Nation pulled 30 people from flooded houses. In southern Utah, the town of Hurricane is digging out from mud that swamped an RV park (Colorado Sun; KTAR; KUTV).

"Once in a generation"

Farmington sits where the Animas runs into the San Juan, and both rivers start in Colorado's San Juan Mountains. Think of a bathtub with two faucets wide open: the water keeps rising in town even after the rain overhead stops. That is what Farmington faced Friday. The rain had paused, but the rivers kept climbing (AP).

"People are not believing that it's going to be as bad as it is. But you can see the water flow coming, you can see the surge coming — it really is this bad," Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe told a noon news conference. "This is a once-in-a-generation time for us. ... You've never seen me saying we need to do these evacuations before. This is singular, and it is real" (Albuquerque Journal).

The National Weather Service put the San Juan at 23.17 feet at Shiprock and 14.5 feet near Farmington, both above their major-flood marks of 20.5 and 12 feet. The Animas in Farmington was at 9.6 feet late Friday morning, just shy of its 10-foot flood line (Albuquerque Journal). About 600 Farmington households were told to leave (AP).

Downstream in Bloomfield, the floodwater breached the city's wastewater plant and sent raw sewage into the river. "There is raw sewage in the river, and there is nothing that we can do to mitigate that at this point," Neeley said. "So stay out of the water" (Source NM). Bloomfield has asked residents to cut back on water use (Albuquerque Journal).

A 7-day-old baby, reached on foot

The hardest rescue came Thursday night near Chaco Canyon. A mother called for help in the middle of the afternoon because her 7-day-old baby was having seizures at their remote home. Storms grounded the aircraft and washed out the roads, so three responders left their vehicles and walked in. They reached the house around midnight and stabilized the infant, who had suffered about 12 seizures, then got mother and child to an ambulance just after 1 a.m. (Albuquerque Journal).

"When severe weather and washed-out roads grounded our aircraft, it took extraordinary persistence from every agency involved to reach this family," said Maj. Gen. Miguel Aguilar, head of the New Mexico National Guard. The Guard has been running boats, helicopters and amphibious vehicles through the flood zone since Thursday (Albuquerque Journal; AP).

Officials are also begging the curious to keep their drones on the ground. Undersheriff Cory Tanner said private drones flown to film the flooding are getting in the way of the aircraft doing rooftop pickups (Albuquerque Journal).

The Navajo Nation braces for the crest

The same water is now rolling west through the Navajo Nation, where it was not expected to peak until late Friday or early Saturday. "Do not wait to make your evacuations. Make your preparations for yourselves, your families, as well as your animals," Deputy Chief Donnie Kee, one of the Navajo Nation's top public-safety officers, told reporters (AP).

Across the line in Arizona, crews pulled seven families, 30 people in all, out of flooded homes in Dennehotso on Thursday night. Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren sent a helicopter for stranded elders that ground crews could not reach, and more than 1,000 sandbags went out (KTAR).

Colorado and Utah

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis declared a disaster emergency Thursday night for 11 southern counties, then added a 12th on Friday. Along the Conejos River, water stood 7 feet deep inside some houses. Around South Fork on the Rio Grande it reached 4 to 5 feet, and 80 to 100 homes were evacuated there. A bridge on a Forest Service road is simply gone (Colorado Sun).

In Durango, the Animas went from about 1,170 cubic feet per second Wednesday evening to 9,850 Friday morning, more than eight times the flow in under two days. The county closed the river to every kind of boat. Stretches of U.S. 160 near Pagosa Springs, U.S. 550 north of Silverton and 38 miles of Colorado 17 were closed (Colorado Sun).

In Hurricane, Utah, the flood hit about 80 homes and 50 vehicles at the Willow Wind RV Park and damaged bridges, culverts and roads. Mayor Clark Fawcett declared a local emergency (KUTV). On Friday the water pushed a shipping container through a wall at the park (KSL).

What's next

The rain came from the leftovers of Hurricane Trudy, which drifted in from the eastern Pacific and hit ground already soaked by an earlier storm (Colorado Sun). In mountain spots it fell on snow and melted it, which added even more water to the rivers. Pagosa Springs got about 5 inches (Colorado Sun).

Forecasters expect more rain and storms in New Mexico through Saturday, up to half an inch more in the northwest corner, before things dry out Sunday and into next week (AP; Source NM). San Juan County is asking for state and federal disaster declarations (Source NM). "We haven't seen the crest of these rivers quite yet," Neeley said (Albuquerque Journal). For Farmington, the next 24 hours decide how big this gets.