President Joe Biden has issued a Disaster Declaration, giving new funding to areas ravaged by fires in early April.
In Mora County, with more than 4.500 residents, roughly 60 percent of residents remained in evacuation zones in age-old farms and cattle communities where the power was cut, said police chief Americ Padilla.
The wooded mountains approximately 40 miles northeast of Santa Fe are known for their tough, self-sufficient inhabitants, many of whom can trace their ancestry back to eighteenth-century Spanish colonizers and Indian tribes.
Local physician Matthew Probst said residents had “high levels of social vulnerability” and families would likely own a $15.000 mobile home, but no homeownership insurance and little money.
Keeping these “norteños” or Northerners, in their homes involves some “norteños” feeling, he said, of belonging to the country.
