New Mexico fire and rescue officials reminded people to exercise caution any time they see water on streets, especially after heavy rains.
“This road over here, which is County Road 68, had turned into a river,” Steven Jenison, chief of the Dixon Volunteer Fire Department, told KOAT. “Normally, it’s just a gravel road – a gravel road many people live on. It was a river with standing waves and very muddy water.”
The fast-flowing water presents its own danger, but worse, it often carries rocks and logs with it. Whether or not there is flooding, the strong water flows can be dangerous, Jenison said.
“Someone had actually walked out into the middle of it,” he said, describing the danger. “I think he wanted to figure out how deep it was ... He thought it was a good idea to go ahead and cross in his car and he found a rock that was like this big ... sitting right in the middle of the lanes of traffic.”
Flood waters are usually deeper than they look, Jenison said.
“You come up to [an] arroyo like this and you don’t really know how deep the water is,” he said. “All you see are the standing waves.”
The state has recently received a lot of rain, and Jenison cautioned that areas with burn scars might be more dangerous.
“That’s a great concern because some of it’s the root systems of these trees that help to prevent flash flooding down hillsides,” he said.
The best thing to do if you find yourself in a similar situation is to wait it out, KOAT reported. Drivers should call 911 instead of trying to cross a road in an area that is flooded.