For the third day, communities in and around Ruidoso and the neighboring Mescalero Apache reservation are watching anxiously as what emergency officials call “extreme” wildfires threaten to sweep through their homes.
The South Fork fire and Salt fire, both of which started on the reservation on Monday morning, have ripped through the area’s mountainous pine forests at astonishing speed. By Monday evening, officials issued an evacuation order to all 8,000 Ruidoso-area residents. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham issued a state of emergency for the area Tuesday afternoon.
As the fires began to spread, Janis Treas, said she stepped out on her porch in Ruidoso and saw huge, red flames in the distance. “Oh my God,” she recalled thinking. . “And all of a sudden, we were stuck here.”
Soon the flames had reduced the Swiss Chalet Inn, where Treas once worked, to a pile of twisted rubble. “That was my first job, when I was in high school,” she said. “Oh, I couldn’t believe it. I cried when I heard it burned down.”
As of Wednesday morning, the fires burned a combined total of 20,000 acres and were almost entirely uncontained, according to fire officials. At least one person has died, and more than 1,400 structures have so far been destroyed. The flames have swept through Alto and Alpine Cellars Village, neighborhoods on Ruidoso’s north side — but so far, the village center has been spared.
Residents are sheltered in evacuation centers in Capitan and Roswell, waiting to hear whether the fires have reached their neighborhoods. Many have already learnt their homes and businesses have been lost.
A ghostly quiet has settled over Ruidoso, interrupted only by the occasional roar of firefighting aircraft flying overhead. Towering columns of smoke billow to the north and south, wafting into town and stinging the eyes of emergency responders and journalists who remain.
Smoke from the Salt fire rises from the Mescalero Apache Reservation south of Ruidoso. 
A plane drops retardant on the South Fork fire west of Ruidoso. 
Smoke from the South Fork fire rises from the west side of Ruidoso. 
Smoke from the South Fork fire rises from the west side of Ruidoso. 
The South Fork fire burns above Ruidoso. 
Burned cars in Gavilan Canyon on the north side of Ruidoso.
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