'I don't think I can go back': Many burn scar residents choose not to return

Yahoo

07-04-2025

LAS VEGAS, N.M. — Three generations of Jon Carleton's family have lived on a property near Mineral Hill, a community in the mountains northwest of Las Vegas.
As a kid, Carleton moved around a lot. But every summer and for Christmas vacation, he and his cousins would meet in San Miguel County.
He bought the property near Mineral Hill from his uncle in 2012. He was living there with his 78-year-old mother 10 years later when the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire destroyed his home, a recreational vehicle and several other buildings on the property.
He bought two RVs so he and his mother could continue living in the area after the wildfire. But eventually, his mother moved to Albuquerque.
"Every time she'd go outside, she just started crying," Carleton said. "It was too much for her, and, I mean, it's almost too much for me. But with my dogs, I don't really have anywhere else to go."
Carleton's struggle to stay in a Northern New Mexico community devastated by the fire in the spring of 2022 — and floodwaters that continue to strike the area in the aftermath — is a common story across the more than 530-square-mile Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon burn scar. Many residents in San Miguel and Mora counties told The New Mexican accounts of friends, neighbors and acquaintances who are packing up and leaving in the wake of the disaster.
While Santa Fe County and the state as a whole saw a modest population increase between 2020 and 2024, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, San Miguel and Mora counties saw their populations drop.
The decrease might seem small — around a 3% for the two counties — but represents almost 900 people lost.
Two years ago, when Vicki Garland left Sapello, north of Las Vegas, she thought her move to Sandia Park was temporary. She planned to rebuild on her property after receiving compensation from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
That's taken longer than expected. She's not sure Sandia Park is where she'd like to stay, but she now doubts whether she'll return to San Miguel County.
"The flooding and the despair ... I would go back there, and it just felt sad," Garland said. "The whole energy of it was not buoyant at all; it was depressed."
She added, "I don't think I can go back."
It's not just the "ghost town" feeling of the area, Garland said. She was diagnosed with breast cancer last year.
A friend who lives with her also has experienced several health problems.
It took just over four minutes for an EMS crew to arrive at their Sandia Park home during a medical emergency. In Sapello, Garland said, it would take 25 minutes to get to the nearest hospital in Las Vegas — and even then, she noted, her friend likely would have been airlifted to Santa Fe.
Being closer to health care services is an unexpected blessing, Garland said.
During the three years since the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire ignited April 6, 2022, she's felt angry — at the U.S. Forest Service, which conducted two prescribed burns in the mountains near Las Vegas that went awry, sparking the blaze, and at FEMA, which many residents have complained took too long to provide compensation for their losses.
Lately, however, she's been choosing to focus on the good: her garden, her pets, spring tulips peeking up out of the earth.
She still yearns for a new couch: a modular sectional, with a chaise on one side and an ottoman on the other. Her daughter is encouraging her to go for a sensible brown or gray, to conceal the pet hair — Garland has two dogs and one cat — but she dreams of a bright aqua blue.
"Every single day we're sad, and every single day we're maybe a little less miserable than we were two years ago," she said.
Cyn Palmer is hanging onto her home in lower Rociada, in the center of the burn scar, she said. But the fear of future disasters has made her consider leaving the community she loves.
"I love Rociada Valley," Palmer said. "[It] is this beautiful, unique place full of really interesting people, incredible history. The people there are resilient and strong, and I've been impressed with how well they tried to take care of each other for the past three years."
She moved to the area in 2019. A retired natural resources manager, she has seen major changes to the ecosystem since the fire.
"Things will never be the same," Palmer said.
The fire "unquestionably" diminished the value of her townhome, she said, which she had paid off just a year before the fire. She believes the damage would make it more difficult to sell her home and move to a place with a lower risk of fires and floods.
Palmer is still working through the FEMA claims process; living with illness and facing a "mountain of paperwork" has been difficult, and she's growing frustrated.
She has been staying in Albuquerque recently. Mold from flooding has contaminated her home, and if she stays there too long she starts experiencing sinus problems, headaches, nosebleeds and digestive issues.
The village also has changed. The Moosehead Bar and Restaurant, where she worked as a bartender before the fire, burned down. Power outages and water shutoffs are frequent after the fire.
"I'd only been there five years, and yet I agonize over whether or not I would want to stay," Palmer said. "My home literally sits square in the middle of a 500-square-mile flood zone, and it's actually one of the greatest fire danger areas in the whole state now."