Fast-acting firefighters cut a line around Samuel Aragon’s ancestral home as the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire blazed around it three years ago, just in time to save the nearly 200-year-old structure from destruction.
His winery, Las Nueve Niñas — named after his nine granddaughters and located above 7,000 feet in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains between Mora and Angel Fire — was also spared.
He and his wife, Elisa Aragon, are grateful to be alive. But their lives have been inextricably changed by the wildfire and subsequent floods, which sent 10-foot-high walls of water raging down the arroyo past their home and through their outbuildings, cutting them off from hungry livestock on the other side.
“We had flooding like we had never seen in our lifetime,” said Samuel Aragon, who at 81 has lived the majority of his life in the same adobe home where he was born.
The Aragons are among more than 1,000 people who have filed lawsuits over the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s pace of providing compensation for losses tied to the massive wildfire — the largest in New Mexico’s recorded history — and the floodwaters that struck in the fire’s aftermath.
The federal government accepted blame for the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon blaze — which ignited from two separate U.S. Forest Service-conducted burns gone awry in April 2022 — and Congress approved a total of nearly $5.5 billion for victims, vowing full compensation for a wide range of losses.
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Angela Gladwell with the Federal Emergency Management Agency speaks about the claims process to an audience full of attorneys and victims of the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire in Las Vegas, N.M., in November 2022.
FEMA says it has paid out more than $2 billion so far for over 15,000 claims, with a March 14 deadline to file an initial claim. But many residents are still waiting for funds.
Among them are the Aragons.
‘We’ve done everything’
With no trees left in the surrounding watershed to slow it down, waves of water washed out roadways, tore down fences and swept away a stone wall Samuel Aragon had spent nine years building by hand.
The floodwaters changed how the couple felt about rain.
“Now we start to get anxiety when the monsoon season comes,” Elisa Aragon said, recounting how she would lie awake in bed, listening to the rumbling sound of water moving massive boulders down the drainage next to their home.
They’ve since moved to higher ground, in a modular home on another piece of property nearby.
They spend each day rebuilding their lives — no thanks, they say, to the federal government, which still hasn’t settled the bulk of their damage claims.
The couple said they initially planned to file claims with FEMA to obtain compensation for damages from the government-caused fire themselves.
But they opted to seek legal assistance after encountering a complicated and costly system that would have required them to quickly complete a seemingly unsurmountable amount of work to prove their damages.
Facing the prospect of having to secure the help of experts in high demand to help them prove the value of their lost trees, soil and fences, or to complete repairs within the short time frame required for reimbursement, they said, they decided to hire lawyers from the Singleton Schreiber law firm to help them navigate the process.
Still, they wait.
“We have filed our notice of loss and proof of loss,” Elisa Aragon said. “We’ve done everything we can do. … I don’t know why it’s taking so long.”
‘Retraumatized’ by FEMA failures
Singleton Schreiber managing partner and former State Auditor Brian Colón said the Aragons are among 1,200 people the law firm has helped file their claims, many of whom are waiting to be compensated due to what he says is FEMA’s failure to develop a comprehensive system for distributing money set aside for fire victims.
“The problem is FEMA systems and staffing has failed miserably. … In fact, the victims of the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire have literally been retraumatized by FEMA’s process and its failures,” Colón said.
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Danielle M. Lucero, a San Miguel firefighter, speaks at a public meeting in November 2022 for victims of the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire to meet with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials.
Not processing claims within 180 days, as required by the federal Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire Assistance Act, refusing to compensate victims for noneconomic damages — such as emotional distress — and not paying claims within 30 days are just some of the ways FEMA has failed, Colón said.
A U.S. district judge ruled in December noneconomic damages were eligible for compensation under the law.
FEMA has filed a motion seeking clarification on that opinion, however, according to a spokesperson.
“Once the Court issues a ruling on that motion, FEMA will be in a position to evaluate its position on noneconomic damages and determine whether there is a path forward to provide compensation or whether it will appeal the ruling,” External Affairs Officer Dianna Segura wrote in an email Friday.
Colón said his firm has filed dozens of lawsuits on behalf of hundreds of claimants to force the government to comply with the rules.
“There are a substantial number of families still hurting right now, and it doesn’t seem the federal government has increased its urgency to put these families in a position to move on with their lives,” Colón said.
“We’re not going to let up. We are going to file more lawsuits until the federal government rightfully compensates these victims,” he added.
Segura disputed Colón’s characterization of the agency’s performance, writing it’s “not true.”
“The Claims Office is proud of the more than $2 billion dollars we have compensated Northern New Mexicans since March of 2023 when our Claims Office began its work to compensate those who suffered losses due to the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire and cascading events,” she wrote.
As of Friday, about 75% — or 15,496 of 20,644 of the claims filed — have been paid out, according to Segura.
“Within six months of the signing of the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire Act, when FEMA began management of compensation requests from Northern New Mexicans, we opened offices and hired staff,” she said. “We have consistently added staff over the last two years, until the recent hiring freeze across federal agencies, which includes the Claims Office.”
Some of the claims have been slowed by residents’ inability to obtain documentation of ownership, “which has put another strain on the process,” Segura said in an interview Friday.
For example, in some cases residents were living in homes that had been gifted to them by a family member years prior without documentation.
Recognizing many in the community didn’t know or understand how to go about getting this paperwork, FEMA offices have hosted workshops and equipped advocates to educate claimants on that issue.
“We recognize this has been a long process,” Segura said.