By SHERRY ROBINSON
All She Wrote
© 2025 New Mexico News Services

A woman from Mora County told me recently: “We always said we were land rich and cash poor. Since the fire, we don’t even have the land.” Besides fire and flood damage to family property, a road washed out, and nobody has rebuilt it.

U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-NM, joined by U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan, have chided FEMA’s New Mexico Joint Recovery Office for its sluggish payout of claims for damages caused by the massive Calf Canyon-Hermit’s Peak blaze three years ago. In their recent letter they said the claims office had yet to compensate many people who lost everything. And it refused to reopen claims for cascading events, such as floods caused by the fires.

It’s odd because this disaster has its own pot of money. The fires were the government’s fault, so Congress created a $5.45 million fund to fully compensate victims. So far, the office has paid $3.2 billion.

The claims office could have been more responsive and more efficient, but I think we should look at the mother ship.

In August, 182 FEMA employees informed Congress that one third of full-time staff, some 2,000 employees including some of the agency’s most experienced, have left this year. In addition, the administration has cut funding and failed to appoint a qualified administrator as required by law. They warned that it’s becoming impossible for FEMA to help Americans survive natural disasters.

With no knowledgeable person running FEMA, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has involved herself in FEMA operations and set new spending rules that delayed contracts and obstructed the agency’s response, according media reports. The president himself has no use for FEMA and wants states to shoulder disaster response.

So is it any surprise that New Mexico has seen slow or no response and funding cuts?

This month the state’s Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said FEMA denied disaster prevention funding for the Ruidoso area, reported Patrick Lohmann of Source NM. The decision “puts lives and property at risk unnecessarily during new or cascading life-threatening flooding events,” said Deputy Secretary Ali Rye, in the state’s appeal.

Many people may not know that one of FEMA’s most important programs provides hazard mitigation grants to help communities plan and rebuild to avoid future disasters. We all watched clips of houses floating away during Ruidoso’s fire-related floods this year. It’s foolish to think this can’t happen again.

FEMA officials reportedly said the state hasn’t fully spent the money it’s received in previous disasters, but Rye argues that FEMA has only provided about $20 million of the $120 million promised to New Mexico for multiple recent disasters.

In September Lohmann reported that FEMA cut $14 million of nearly $30 million promised for the aftermath of Ruidoso’s fires, even though Democratic attorneys general were already suing the Trump administration for refusing to spend mitigation grants approved by Congress.

FEMA abruptly ended a related program, Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, in April that would have provided $4 million. Among other projects was Acoma Pueblo’s plan to reduce flooding risk. New Mexico is the one of 21 states in the lawsuit to suffer cuts to both programs.

All this is happening as wildfire mitigation in the state – prescribed burns and hazardous fuel treatments – plunged by 53% since January, according to a report by Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group.

“The reason we want to thin and prescribe burn and do the pile burning is because we want a healthy forest, and we want to keep it safe so when there’s a fire, we don’t lose the entire forest,” Bobbie Scopa, executive secretary of the group, told KUNM. Scopa was a firefighter for 45 years.

While the Forest Service blames “operational challenges,” Scopa cited the administration’s downsizing of agencies, budget cuts and the government shutdown. The agency hasn’t disclosed an official number, but in a letter co-signed by Heinrich in March, the USFS had lost 3,000 workers and was set to lose 7,000 more. Many were holders of red cards that certify their training as firefighters.

The Forest Service had an 80-million-acre backlog of projects even before the job losses. The responsibilities for the reduced workforce are endangering their lives and health.

Now weather experts say we could see a dry winter.

Pray for rain.