NEW MEXICO WILDFIRES UPDATE! Search Ends Successfully With Discovery of All 29 Missing Individuals

The mayor of the Village of Ruidoso said on Wednesday that all 29 people who had been missing after a pair of wildfires that had resulted in the deaths of two people have been located and accounted for.

“All of the people that we had on the missing list is now at zero,” Mayor Lynn Crawford said during a community gathering about the South Fork and Salt fires.

At the beginning of this week, Crawford stated that more than twenty individuals had not been found following the two fires that broke out the previous week and caused the town of Ruidoso, which has a population of approximately 7,500 people, to be evacuated.

There have been two deaths that have been attributed to the fires, which have collectively burnt more than 25,000 acres in and around Ruidoso, according to the New Mexico State Police.

On June 17, the fires broke out on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, and they continued to burn eastward, being fed by the high temperatures and the powerful wind. The investigation is currently looking into what caused the fires.

According to Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, there have been around 500 homes that are believed to have been destroyed, and it is anticipated that 1,400 structures have been affected.

Secondary searches of damaged structures have been conducted by urban search and rescue teams, in which twenty dogs that have been trained to identify human remains have been included.

According to Ernie Rhodes, who is the urban search and rescue operation chief for the fires for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, “I am happy to report that we did not find any human remains.”

The improvement in meteorological conditions, which slowed the rate of fire activity, has contributed to the progress that has been accomplished in confining the flames NBC stated.

In a daily update, the New Mexico Forestry Division reported that the South Fork Fire had been confined to a level of 69% by Thursday, while the Salt Fire had reached a level of 66% containment.