‘Animosity building up’: Ruidoso mayor seeks more details about South Fork Fire investigation

An air tanker drops fire retardant called slurry over and around areas in the Village of Ruidoso, N.M., on Tuesday, June 18, 2024. (Photo by Chancey Bush / Albuquerque Journal) PHOTO CANNOT BE REPUBLISHED

Two weeks after a team of investigators issued a brief announcement that a lightning strike ignited the deadly South Fork Fire, calls for a fuller explanation are growing from local officials and members of the public.

Both Ruidoso Mayor Lynn Crawford and Lincoln County Sheriff Michael Wood have, in recent days, called on the Bureau of Indian Affairs to release a report detailing findings from a multi-agency investigation into the fire’s cause.

Crawford, in an interview Tuesday with Source New Mexico , said he doesn’t think investigators are necessarily lying or covering anything up. But the lack of detailed information has meant rumors are circulating wildly, along with unfounded accusations directed at the Mescalero Apache Reservation, where the fires began, he said.

“If it is truly a lightning strike, an act of God, and they have satellite imagery, then we need to show the people,” Crawford said Tuesday. “So that there’s not speculation.”

Public records and lightning data shed new light on Salt and South Fork fire origins

Wood’s office posted on Facebook on July 11 that the sheriff had made a “formal request” to “personally review” the investigative reports into the fire origin. The sheriff did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls from Source NM about why he sought the report findings.

Both fires began June 17 on the northeast corner of the Mescalero Apache Reservation, and high winds and dry conditions carried both fires through the Village of Ruidoso and toward nearby Ruidoso Downs, causing thousands to flee their homes.

Both fires are now defeated, thanks to hundreds of firefighters and early monsoon rains, but the blazes destroyed or damaged at least 1,400 homes, killed two people and burned through an area of more than 30 square miles. The rains also caused additional havoc, creating floods on burn-scarred soil that have stranded drivers, destroyed bridges and swept away homes.

On July 3, the Bureau of Indian Affairs announced that the South Fork Fire’s cause was a lightning strike, but provided no additional details of when the strike occurred and where. The same announcement said that an investigation was ongoing into the cause of the Salt Fire, and that the FBI was offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the “person or persons responsible for starting the Salt Fire.”

Robyn Broyles, a spokesperson for the BIA, told Source NM that a report will be released with more information about the South Fork Fire investigation, but she would only say that it would be released “as soon as possible.”

The lightning report takes some time to compile, she said Tuesday, because it brings together Light Detection and Ranging data, known as LiDAR, along with lightning data and other sources of information, including field reports.

She did, however, confirm that the lightning strike investigators believe sparked the South Fork Fire occurred prior to June 17 and then “smoldered until very windy conditions spread the fire.” She declined to say, even approximately, when and where that lightning strike occurred that provided the spark for what became the 17,500-acre fire.

Broyles acknowledged in a brief phone interview that her office has heard much speculation and distrust about the fires’ cause from those still reeling from the fires and floods. She urged them to be patient, and stressed that, just because there were clear, blue skies the days the fire began, that doesn’t mean a lightning strike isn’t to blame.

“These are questions the community is asking. They are valid questions. We don’t have anything to hide,” she said. “People are not fire ecologists. They don’t know how a fire could start without lightning” the day the fire takes off.

Lightning data provided to Source NM by Vaisala Xweather, a firm that does lightning analyses for the National Weather Service, shows the last lightning strikes in the area of the South Fork Fire start occurred June 7, 10 days before the fire began. The closest strike was 1.03 miles from the fire’s ignition site listed in official reports.

Crawford said he’s asked repeatedly for additional proof of lightning being the cause since July 3. He hopes to present all of the findings at a town hall meeting for transparency’s sake and to quell rumors. Without more details, his constituents are increasingly angry about the devastating fire and are more inclined to pin the blame on somebody without evidence.

“There’s animosity building up,” he said. “And it doesn’t have to be.”

Adding to the vacuum is the disappearance of public dispatch records that provided details about a cluster of small fire starts that occurred around the same time and area of the Salt and South Fork ignition sites.

A Source NM review of Alamogordo Interagency Dispatch records for a story June 20 showed four additional confirmed fire starts discovered between June 16 and 18. All of the fires were between a tenth and a quarter of an acre in size. Those records no longer appear in the dispatch logs.

Those dispatch records were removed as part of ongoing investigations into the causes of those fires, Broyles said. Those investigations had not been previously announced.

Broyles said it is standard practice to remove those records from public view when an investigation commences.

The fires “are part of ongoing wildfire investigations,” Broyles said. “Information was removed from website publication as part of the investigations.”

The removal of those records, Crawford said, just adds to the haze of uncertainty.

“That’s what the public wants to know,” he said. “We knew all this before, and then all that’s just evaporated.”

Speculation and rumors about the fires’ causes started soon after the evacuations were announced, including unfounded arson rumors circulated by some elected officials and candidates.

Adding to the speculation were official incident reports approved by incident command that listed, for several days for each fire, the cause of the blazes as “human.” The BIA later told Source NM that the cause listed as “human” was an error resulting from a glitch that automatically converted text in that field entered as “undetermined” to “human.”

The day after Source NM’s story about the error, the records changed and listed the causes of both fires as “undetermined.” Following the July 3 announcement, the South Fork Fire cause was listed as “natural” in subsequent reports.

Crawford said the Forest Service and other agencies have sent “mixed messages” that are fueling confusion and rumor-mongering, including the single, brief announcement July 3 that deemed lightning as the cause of the South Fork Fire but also offered an FBI reward for information leading to an arrest on the Salt Fire.

The July 3 announcement said that a team of wildland fire investigators and law enforcement officers were involved in the investigation, including those the BIA, FBI, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, along with state and tribal officials. The BIA is the lead agency.

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