Rain, rain go away?
2008 monsoon season packs quite a wallop

ABOVE: New Mexico Department of Transportation worker Eddie Hernandez stands in the pool of water on Maloney Avenue on Wednesday morning. The pumps that keep water from building up on the road failed again after Tuesday's heavy rain storm. BELOW: Police and DOT block the righthand south-bound lane of Highway 491 to divert traffic away from flooding on the road near mile marker 11 Wednesday afternoon July, 23. [photos by Cable Hoover / Independent]

Rain clouds threaten dancers outside the McKinley County Courthouse Friday afternoon, July 25. [photo by Cable Hoover / Independent]

By Gaye Brown
de Alvarez
Staff writer

GALLUP — Late summer monsoons have always hit the Gallup area. The monsoon season starts in July and ends around the end of August and gives the area much-needed moisture. Weeds grow to enormous height, roofs sag, streets flood and even some mosquitoes come out.

Rumor around town was that the Indian dances made it rain. But even on evenings when there were no dances, years ago, the monsoons found Gallup. And because this area gets very little moisture, the infrastructure of the town is ill-equipped to handle large amounts of rain.

New Mexico only had about 1 inch of rain from Jan. 1 to June 1, and then the clouds opened. To date, according to AccuWeather, the area has seen 8.08 inches of precipitation, including Monday’s light rain. This amount, according to the online National Weather Service’s Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service, is 150 percent above normal for this time of year. The normal for the year at this time is 5.52 inches of precipitation. However, the nearly 7 inches of precipitation this area has received since June 1 is unusual.
In July 2007, precipitation totals were 150 percent above normal; July 2006, precipitation was 25 percent of normal and in July 2005, it was 200 percent above normal.

In the old days, Gallup resident Frank Garcia, who was the director of Civil Defense from 1974 to 1980 and then again from 1982-1988, was in charge of all emergencies in McKinley County. He remembers “The Big Flood” of 1973.

“The whole area was flooded from Second Street to Ninth Street,” he said. Houses were flooded and the federal government came in with Urban Renewal funds to assist homeowners with repairing water damage to about 100 homes. After that summer, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers widened Maloney Avenue, rechanneled the Rio Puerco to 100 feet wide and trenched it deeper for better water flow. Pumps were installed at Sixth Street and Maloney. This was all completed before Interstate Highway 40 wound its ribbon through downtown Gallup.

“We had problems every year prior to them rechanneling the Rio Puerco,” Garcia said. “And we went all over the county to help people with their flood problems, not just here in Gallup.”

Years later, the Office of Civil Defense was renamed Office of Civil Preparedness, then the Office of Emergency Preparedness, and now it is FEMA. Who will help during the next “Big Flood?” The old pumps are now maintained by the New Mexico Department of Transportation, which claimed a blown fuse caused the flooding last week.

Sheriff Frank Gonzales remembers what caused the backing up of water in downtown Gallup in the Rio Puerco before it was re-engineered.

“The reason it used to flood is because down the Perky, by Allison, shale rock would keep the water from flowing and then it would back up,” Gonzales said. He remembers one year the water from the Rio Puerco started rising and they had a detention center by what are now the city warehouses, and they had to evacuate about 50 people who were serving time there.

“They were all in there for misdemeanors, so we just let them go,” Gonzales said and added that he was a sergeant in the Gallup Police Department that particular year. Later he served as chief of police from about 1980-1993.

He said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers eliminated the accumulation of shale rock, and after that, everything was fine.

He doesn’t remember anybody dying during “The Big Flood” of 1973, but he does remember when two brothers were swept away in the ferocious monsoon hail storm of the mid-1980s in the ditch by Eightth Street and Coal Avenue. The two brothers, one who tried to save the other who was swept away, both drowned.

Former Fire Chief Alfred “Porky” Abeita remembers him and his wife coming out of the Dandee’s Supermarket in 1973 and seeing ominous clouds. But on the south side, he said, there was only a couple of sprinkles. Firefighter Julian Kozeliski called Abeita at home and said the water was rising and was now to the running board of the fire truck at the Northside Fire Station. So Abeita went over to the northside and they formed a command station at Ray Kauzlaric’s bar “The Big K,” which is now Third Street Tavern.

He remembers seeing northside resident Manuel Soto carrying his wife on his back, but he had a small boat and the firefighters borrowed the boat and waded through the water, looking for people who needed help. By the time they reached Sixth Street and Maloney, he said the water was waist-high.

“It was nuts,” Abeita remembers. “People were in trees and standing on their roofs.”

The National Weather Service is predicting thunderstorms for the next week, so be prepared.