Floods & Fires in Mora/San Miguel Counties

Thank you

Thank you to The Las Vegas Community Foundation who supported DPAC’s work generously.

Thank you to David Henkel for supporting DPAC’s overnight visit.

Thank you to the Pendaries Village Ladies Auxiliary for feeding us and hosting our visit (and baking delicious cookies).

Thank you to the Historic Plaza Hotel for donating rooms for DPAC’s overnight visit in Las Vegas.

Thank you to Highlands University for hosting our final presentation in Las Vegas.

Thank you to the Mora Senior Services Center for hosting our final presentation in Mora.

Thank you to all the people who gave their time and expertise to our students including:

Aaron Cayer, Alex Webb, Amy Bell, Andrew Stone, Ashley Saulcy, Braden Belliveau, Chris Cornelius, Crissy Perham, Dick Nordhaus, Donald Pettit, Edward Martinez, Elmo Baca, Francisco Uviña, Gabriel Fries-Briggs, Gilbert Quintana Nancy Quintana Hiram Crook, James Biggs, Jeanette Hart Mann, Justin Thor Simenson, Karen King, Kathy Kambic, Katya Crawford, Kristen Gamboa, Manuel Montoya, Marcy Litvak, Michael Jaramillo, Noah Berke, Paul Aragon, Quentin Wilson, Renia Ehrenfreucht, Sharon Hausam, Tim Castillo, Tom Forrest, Tom Vliet, Tony Fettes

A HUGE thank you to the students!

Andrew S. Archibeque, MArch ‘24

Danielle Begay MArch ‘24

Charelle Brown MArch ‘24

Krystle Chapman MArch ‘24

Steven Esparza MArch ‘24

Gonzalo Gonzalez MArch ‘24

Jing Qin MArch ‘24

Hanel Jun MArch ‘24

Jacob Martinez MArch ‘24

Elizabeth Rivera-Dirks MArch ‘24

Halle Tsikewa Sago MArch ‘24

Omid Shafigh Khatibi MArch ‘24

Ian Tibbetts MArch ‘24

Ferda Didar Unal MArch ‘24

Anna Wyka MArch ‘24

Sushil Darjee BAArch‘23

Fatima Ahmadsalah Hersi BAArch ‘23

Zaina Yousef Katba Bader BAArch ‘23

Joseph Lutz BAArch ‘23

Quinn Vance BAArch ‘23

Tina Ruiz MCRP ‘23

Ayonitoluwa Oyenuga MCRP ‘23

Helen Ganahl MCRP ‘23

John Sandlin MCRP ‘23

Kyla Danforth MCRP ‘23

Vidal Gonzales MCRP ‘23

Marisol Meyer Driovinto MCRP ‘24

Karina Rodgers MCRP ‘23

Louise Bani Sarcer MLA ‘24

Maggie Schneiderman MLA ‘24

Thea Swift MLA ‘24

On April 6, 2022, the Hermit’s Peak fire started as spot fires originating from a prescribed burn. On April 19, 2022 the Calf Canyon Fire started nearby with holdover fires from a different prescribed burn pile. On April 22, those two fires combined, eventually becoming the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s history to date - burning 341,471 acres of land and destroying over 900 structures. The fire was not fully contained until July/August, 2022 as the monsoon season brought much-needed moisture to the region.

The recovery effort from the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire is multi-faceted and ongoing. The destruction from the fire has not only left residents of San Miguel and Mora Counties without homes, but has also compromised municipal water supplies, private water wells, commercial and recreational buildings and livestock, impacting everything from housing to economic development to natural resources. On May 4, 2022, President Biden declared a major disaster for the area, allowing the activation of FEMA and Homeland Security Resources; then on September 30 the Hermit’s Peak Fire Assistance Act was signed into law, allocating $2.5 billion in compensation to those impacted by the fire. As a part of FEMA’s long term recovery effort to ensure relief dollars are spent most effectively, the Mora-San Miguel Long Term Recovery Group was formed in August to help identify unmet needs in the community and connect community members to these substantial federal resources. This process is expected to last a decade.

In Spring 2023, the DPAC studio focused on areas affected by recent fires and floods in Northern NM, enlisting the creative and academic energy of 21 graduate and undergraduate students in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Community & Regional Planning. Communities in Mora and San Miguel counties, Pendaries Village, Las Vegas Community College and the Long Term Recovery Group, had all reached out to DPAC to work on issues related to rebuilding after the fire, including designing community buildings, housing recovery, and creating resilient landscapes and improved water resources. DPAC students engaged with housing, natural resources, fire resilience, and design for fire impact prevention, as well as for environmental and cultural resilience. DPAC spent an initial site visit overnight in Las Vegas when we visited communities, helped with logistics for a resilience fair, and toured fire damage in Pendaries Village, the landscape of Luna Community College, and sediment choked acequias in Mora County.

The studio nurtured and built upon community capacity for resilient and sustainable rebuilding of housing, community centers, and open spaces during the semester through a variety of online and in person meetings with communities and representatives. Students held listening sessions and worked digging out debris on an acequia clean-up day. More than 50 individual academic reviewers, experts, FEMA employees and community members consulted with the students on their design work multiple times during the semester. DPAC seeks to support and amplify existing networks of community resources and leverages this student work and intellectual resources to identify opportunities for communities to plan, design, and build together, sharing promising practices and rural based solutions for fire resilience and rebuilding to create quality places to live.

As New Mexico faces more and more extreme weather events every year due to climate change, the chance for another Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire only grows. This studio researched the impacts of the fire on water and natural resources, housing, and economic development, and provided recommendations for resilient recovery and redevelopment. This final report is in two parts: a planning document and a design document. We hope it will enable communities to use this research to rebuild in a self-determined and culturally appropriate manner.

Catherine Page Harris

Michaele Pride Co-Directors UNM Design + Planning Assistance Center

Erin Callahan Community + Regional Planning

June 2023