As Ruidoso area residents return to their homes – or what’s left of their homes – we’ll be watching FEMA.
For the past two years, since the disastrous Hermit’s Peak-Calf Canyon fires in northern New Mexico, we’ve heard more about what FEMA hasn’t done than what it has done.
This year the agency began changing its New Mexico operation. Jay Mitchell, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s new head of New Mexico operations, announced major changes. FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell stood next to the governor at a recent news conference, promising, “We will be by your side throughout this recovery.”
We’d all like to believe that. It would mean that the agency listened to criticism and responded. Finally.
For months, fire victims, advocates and elected officials complained about Mitchell’s predecessor, Angela Gladwell, director of the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Claims office. Gladwell became the face of dysfunctional government and failure to help people in desperate need after the fire in early 2022. The claims office didn’t write a check until April 2023 and by year end had expended just 7 percent of the $4 billion allocated by Congress. In April 2024 the payout had inched up to 13 percent.