Flash Floods Collapse Bridge, Wash out Route 66 in New Mexico
A flash flood swept a hatchback carrying an adult woman, an adult man and an infant into a low-water crossing six miles north of Agua Fria, in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, at 9:09 p.m. MDT on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026, the National Weather Service's Albuquerque, New Mexico, office said. The woman died; the man and the infant were injured but rescued.
A separate National Weather Service report said a woman in Socorro County died after her truck was swept away by floodwaters south of Bernardo in the early hours of Monday, Oct. 26, 2026. Search crews recovered her body by 4 p.m. that day.
Flash flooding had already forced an evacuation in Cibola County on Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026.
Flooding also collapsed a bridge over the Rio Puerco near Belen, in Valencia County, the weather service reported. Overflow from the Rio San Jose had flooded multiple homes in the Highland Meadows area near Mesita, also in Valencia County, the weather service said, and washed out part of historic Route 66 at Laguna Pueblo, in Cibola County, two days after that earlier evacuation, the weather service said.
