Doña Ana County Emergency Manager Amanda Bowen spoke with multimedia reporter Noah Raess to provide an update on relief efforts after flooding and evacuations gripped the county in late September.
Noah Raess:
Just to start off, I was wondering if you could describe the relief efforts that took place after the flooding.
Amanda Bowen:
So Doña Ana County, as you probably know, was impacted by a couple of different storms in late September. First the tropical storm and then the outfall from hurricane Polo, and the combination of those floods, really left the ground saturated and then affected some of our infrastructure, our flood infrastructure, and really caused some flooding problems for our residents. And so as a result of that, we have been working both with our residents and with our public infrastructure partners to work through the recovery process and each one of those is a little bit different. So, we have first prioritized work with our individual residents. We've set up what we're calling disaster case management. It's sort of a one stop shop for residents to be able to access resources and assistance. And so for residents, they can contact the case managers. They are set up throughout the county, and they can reach out to the case manager to help them to review the case. What damages they've experienced and be able to assist them with those recovery efforts. They'll make an individual recovery plan for them. And so, sometimes that looks like financial assistance. Sometimes that looks like repair and replacement of items or removal of sheetrock. And so each individual circumstance is different. And so our team is working to assess those needs and fill them as possible. Some of that we have also deployed teams out to do damage assessments on individual residents. Be able to classify those damages and report up through the state to the federal government in our request for assistance to the residents. And so that's still, sort of pending at this point. We've also sent some volunteer teams to residents' homes to assist with cleanup, removal of any damaged sheetrock or debris that's on the property, help clean up mud and muck, that sort of thing. Recovery on the public infrastructure side looks a little bit different. Many of our partners, and throughout several of the jurisdictions have been impacted. And so, getting a full look at the damages that were incurred to things like roadways, our water and wastewater infrastructure, dams and arroyos that move water has been underway. Emergency repairs are taking place, and we've been meeting with the state and FEMA to explain the need for some assistance on that front as well.
Noah Raess:
I was wondering, do you guys have a total dollar amount of damages or is there any numbers you can give to kind of describe the scale of the damages that you guys have seen?
Amanda Bowen:
Absolutely. So at this point, again, it's sort of separated between public infrastructure and individual assistance. From a public infrastructure perspective, which is really the first number that FEMA begins to look at, we've accumulated about $17 million in damages that are known at this time. That doesn't account for the additional assessments that our teams are doing. Maybe infrastructure that they haven't been able to get to because it was underwater or underground or things like that. And so, we're looking in the $17 million range as far as damages are concerned. So, that is like Caballo Soil and Water Conservation District, Elephant Butte Irrigation District, Doña Ana Soil and Water Conservation District, Doña Ana County, City of Las Cruces, City of Sunland Park, CRRUA, City of Anthony, and so it's a wide array of different partners that pull together to make up that number. And then from an individual perspective, we're still regularly getting in damage assessments from our residents and photographs and things. But we have about 30 homes that were majorly impacted. And so, working with those residents through a recovery process
Noah Raess:
Flooding of this scale doesn't really happen that often in this area. I was wondering what kind of major challenges you guys run into during this whole time?
Amanda Bowen:
Well, I think the challenges that we experience are often related to the fact that we don't get a lot of rains like this. And so our infrastructure, when we get grant funding for infrastructure and things, it doesn't necessarily cover a worst case scenario for holding or managing an incident of this size. And so, we build to standards that are most frequent or often. And so then when we do get these really large scale rains, our infrastructure is not capable of really maintaining that. Additionally, successive drought means that it, you know, the grounds are not really prepped to be receiving the multiple inches of rain and so, I think the biggest challenges for us are just in the fact that we don't receive these kinds of incidents often and so the ability to manage them is diminished just a little bit, if that makes sense.
Noah Raess:
My final question is, what do the next steps look like for the county and is there any idea of how long these recovery efforts might take place?
Amanda Bowen:
So recovery is a really long term picture for us. We're still working through recovery from Vado, which happened July of last year. And so there's a lot of pieces that go into that. We're sort of in the beginning steps of recovery. So, as you know, getting assistance, financial and otherwise for repairs and the actual repairs often take a long time. And so, we're working through the many damage assessments that have to take place. Discussions with our state and federal partners, requesting that assistance. And we so far don't have an answer from them as far as whether or not there will be some kind of financial reimbursement for any of the damages we've incurred. Our focus will almost always remain on our residents directly. And so working through, we have some committees set up that work through, it's called a long term recovery group. That stays with the residents throughout their case until we feel like there's some resolve for the residents. Sometimes that means, filling out a FEMA application. Sometimes that means identifying other sources of funding to help them with repairs. Connecting them with a nonprofit. And so that work goes on for quite some time until we feel like their needs have been met. We are still, like I said, working through cases from last summer. And it just takes a while to work through some of the appeal processes for aid for residents. And so we try to exhaust every option and opportunity for them before we move on from that. And so, we probably have a handful of cases still open from Vado. And so we're, we're in this for, for the long haul. Our recovery process from last summer will probably take us about five years. Same with this one. Some of the repairs that have to take place require extensive funding requests, and then the work itself can require the use of engineers and planners that have to take their time in doing due diligence. The removal of sand and silt from behind dam infrastructure, that kind of thing. It takes quite some time to be able to fully recover and say that we've made our way through it. And so, our partners in us are really working through those processes now.
