Jerry Gomez was devastated when his brother called him last year to tell him that his home was engulfed and burned to the ground during the historic Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire.
“My brother calls me and says, ‘Well, sorry brother, it’s gone,’ so what do you do?” Gomez told KOB recently.
The largest fire in the history of the state of New Mexico took just about everything Gomez owned. He was out of town when the fire’s path destroyed his home. He returned to find his truck, mementos, and nearly all his home’s contents burned or ruined.
Eight months after the fire was finally controlled, Gomez has rebuilt a new home thanks to family, friends, and faith in a better future.
“No matter what happens, every day has got to get better,” Gomez said. “And I know that we stumble and we fall, and we say, ‘Why are we having to do this?’ We say, ‘This is not right,’ well of course it’s not right, but it already happened. So, now, what do we do?”
Gomez rebuilt. With borrowed tools and help from neighbors, friends, and family, Gomez built a home smaller in size than his previous house but perhaps appreciated more. For most of last year, Gomez lived in a trailer.
“I can live here now,” Gomez said. “It’s comfortable. The agony goes away now that I have all this. It’s a powerful feeling, I’m home, I can do what I need to do.”
Gomez said the process of recovery isn’t easy and though the fire was nearly a year ago the pain it caused still lingers. “It’s not easy. It’s not easy to work through it,” Gomez said. “But that’s part of it, no? Even good people get frustrated. The people who lost everything, they can’t see it. They can’t understand tomorrow because they are still full of hate.”
No human life was lost in the fire, but among the 300,000 acres that burn were rural communities with lost legacies and culture that must be restored in some fashion.
“The people down the road who made every adobe (home) by hand, all of those are gone,” Gomez said. “They’re not going to make any more adobes. But we have lived here forever and we don’t want to change that. We can sell the place and go somewhere-no, no, no, no, no. There are too many roots here.”
Gomez isn’t going anywhere
