New Mexico residents watch in shock as flash flood sweeps entire house downstream

The Associated Press

· Posted: Jul 09, 2025 11:11 PM EDT | Last Updated: 5 hours ago

Residents were glued to the windows astatine a riverside brewery successful Ruidoso, New Mexico, arsenic a flash flood swept done town, carrying rocks and debris.

Nervous chatter filled the taproom astatine Downshift Brewing Company, wherever astir 50 radical were sheltering from monsoon rains that caused the Rio Ruidoso to swell to much than six metres on Tuesday, a tentative record.

The gasps successful the country grew louder arsenic an full location floated by, knocking down trees successful its path.

The turquoise overgarment connected the beforehand doorway of the single-storey achromatic location with brownish slats was hardly disposable nether layers of mud.

But section creator Kaitlyn Carpenter, who was filming the flooding connected her phone, recognized it instantly arsenic the household location of 1 of her champion friends.

"I've been successful that location and person memories successful that house, truthful seeing it travel down the stream was conscionable beauteous heartbreaking," she said. "I conscionable couldn't judge it."

A awesome of flood's destruction

No 1 was wrong the location that day. Carpenter says her person stays elsewhere during the summertime since the upland municipality is prone to flooding.

Images and video she took of the location have been wide shared arsenic a stark awesome of the flood's destruction.

Three people at a riverside RV parkland died aft being swept distant successful the river, including 2 children. Dozens of homes person been damaged, and streets were clogged with mud and debris.

Farther down the river, pieces of metallic and different debris were twisted astir histrion trunks.

Broken histrion limbs were wedged against homes and piled connected porches. The h2o was heavy with sediment and galore roads remained closed Wednesday.

The fashionable summertime destination has been particularly susceptible to flooding since past summer, erstwhile the South Fork and Salt fires raced crossed tinder-dry wood and destroyed hundreds of homes. Residents were forced to fly a partition of flames, lone to grapple with aggravated flooding aboriginal that summer.