'Heartbeat city': Lubbock couple recounts harrowing evacuation from Ruidoso South Fork fire

Nick and Melissa Long had to wrap up the vacation at their Ruidoso cabin a little early this week.

"I could just stand in front of the garage and look up and see unbelievable smoke barreling," Nick said.

The retired Lubbock couple has owned a cabin in the Upper Canyon area on the western edge of Ruidoso, New Mexico since 2021, and they spend about three months out of each year there in the popular resort town.

"When you drive around in the evening, people just wave at you, and they're just out there talking, drinking iced tea or having a beer," Nick said. "Every cabin has a story to it."

But after the South Fork Fire broke out Monday, Nick wasn't sure if their home-away-from-home was still standing.

"It's history, I'm afraid."

Since the fire sparked, it had burned more than 16,000 acres, destroying around 1,400 structures in its wake. Two people have died in the flames. The cause of the fire remained under investigation late in the week, according to the New Mexico governor's office.

The quickly advancing wildfire forced the evacuation of the entire village of Ruidoso Monday. Nick and Melissa and their guests were among the more than 8,000 people who fled the area that afternoon and evening.

"'Ready, Set, Go' are the three steps of the warning system for Ruidoso, and between 1:30 and 2 o'clock, it was put on "Go" in the Upper Canyon," Nick said. "It looked like the Upper Canyon was just going to be toast."

More: 2 confirmed dead, 1,400 structures lost as flames ravage Ruidoso

"I just told everybody, 'We gotta get out of here. We'll meet at the Pizza Hut parking lot, and that will get us through downtown, and we'll convene there and decide what we're going to do next,'" he continued. "But as we left out, every intersection had cars blocking them — some of them had lights and some didn't — and they all had on yellow shirts and yellow vests, and they were waving people down. There was no way you were going up."

Nick and Melissa decided to head toward Roswell to say goodbye to the family members staying with them and part ways from there.

"We got to going down Sudderth through the downtown, and it was bumper-to-bumper. And this was Monday afternoon when Ruidoso is generally a lot quieter," Nick said. "I would say for 10 straight blocks it was bumper-to-bumper.

"We met emergency vehicles with lights, sheriffs, EMTs, fire trucks, and most of them were going west towards the Upper Canyon."

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"The smoke was I don't know how many feet in the air above the mountain, but it was unreal," he continued. "You could look back behind us and it was just getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger."

Melissa said this was the first time the Longs had experienced an evacuation in Ruidoso, though fires in the nearby Lincoln National Forest are relatively common and something many of their neighbors are familiar with.

"Our neighbor said, 'Oh, they say this every time, and it always burns from one direction to the other and it'll be fine,'" Melissa said. "Then she called me in 45 minutes and said, 'Well, we're evacuating.'

"We just had no experience with that, but we got with it and got out of there pretty quickly."

The couple said they were not afraid as the fire bore down on the village, but they were fueled by adrenaline as they worked to get out.

"It was just heartbeat city. All I could think was, 'I gotta get my family out of here.' That was my whole driving force," Nick said. "It was sad backing out and looking at that house and thinking we may never see this again, … but it's insured and it's paid for."

''It's the people that were in the house that made the good times," he said. "That's priceless."

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Lubbock couple recounts evacuation from Ruidoso South Fork Fire