July 11--PECOS CANYON -- The work of more than 40 volunteers over countless manhours was reduced to debris in a matter of moments.
A mud and rock slide occurred at around 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, dumping more than 6 feet of muck on the Brush Ranch, which is set in this canyon of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range.
The event, which destroyed more than 1,000 sand bags and filled nearly all the diversion channels -- some more than 10 feet deep -- was caused by an afternoon thunderstorm washing down steep slopes burned by the Tres Lagunas Fire.
"We had about an inch of rain in 45 minutes," said ranch manager Bob Ingersoll, who was on the property during the slide. "I heard it coming down from everywhere, and it roared.
"There was no place for me to go. I was getting close to just pinning myself against a rock wall and hoping for the best."
But the slide eventually stopped, leaving mud as deep as 4 feet in a second-story entryway that was groundlevel against the upper slope.
While no one was harmed and no structures were damaged, a nearby fishing pond was nearly completely filled with sediment. And a big mess was left to clean up.
"That pond was about 14 feet deep. Was. If there was anything alive in there, there's nothing alive now, that's for sure," said Bob's son, Josh Ingersoll, who also works on the 30-acre private ranch. It includes 19 buildings, which are used for corporate retreats and private gatherings.
Roughly an hour after the slide, members of the Pecos Canyon Volunteer Fire Department began hauling away the debris with heavy machinery, an effort that could take up to a few days, said Bob Ingersoll, who is also a captain with the department.
"I don't even know what to think -- look at all this," he said. "It was many, many hours of work (that) we have to do all over." But it wasn't completely a loss, since the work did help protect the buildings, he said.
But now, he added, it's a race against time.
"We're probably going to work on this until we can't move anymore -- we have to make room for the next event. ... And I'm afraid each event will bring more and more," he said.
Pamela Mathis, a spokesperson for the Burned Area Emergency Response team assessingthe post-fire impact of the Tres Lagunas blaze, said heavy equipment is on order to deal with the after-effects. A backhoe, dump truck and two-man saw teams to cut woody debris could arrive as soon as today. Crews also have begun pumping the toilets at nearby campgrounds.
"What we want to do is prevent the waste from mixing with the river water and going downstream, so we pumped them out in case there's potential flooding," she said.
Copyright 2013 - Albuquerque Journal, N.M.
