San Juan River crest tops century-old record, forcing hundreds of evacuations across Four Corners

Floodwaters that swept through the Four Corners region over the weekend began receding Monday, but emergency crews in New Mexico and Colorado continued search-and-rescue operations and damage assessments after the San Juan River crested higher than at any point in more than a century, forcing hundreds of evacuations and triggering a request for federal disaster aid.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico was scheduled to tour the flood zone in San Juan County on Monday alongside Maj. Gen. Miguel Aguilar of the New Mexico National Guard, according to a statement from the governor's office. The visit comes two days after the governor's office reported that the San Juan River at Farmington had crested roughly two feet above its previous record, set in 1909, swamping neighborhoods along both the San Juan and Animas rivers.

Record crest, hundreds of rescues

The flooding began after heavy rain fell across the region — where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet — starting Wednesday, Oct. 21, on ground already saturated by two months of above-average monsoon moisture. By Friday, rescuers in San Juan County were wading into homes with three to four feet of standing water and using National Guard boats, helicopters and amphibious vehicles to reach stranded residents.

According to a New Mexico governor's office news release issued Saturday, law enforcement and Guard units carried out hundreds of water rescues between the cities of Farmington and Bloomfield. About 58 National Guard members, including swift-water rescue teams, deployed to the county Friday and Saturday, and a Guard crew reached a family stranded near Chaco Canyon overnight Thursday to evacuate an infant who was having repeated seizures after roads washed out around their home.

No deaths have been reported in connection with the flooding, the governor's office said. The river gauge at Farmington is maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey, which has tracked streamflow at the site since the early twentieth century. Roughly 600 Farmington households were ordered to evacuate low-lying areas along the river, according to a report from Scripps News; by Monday, officials said remaining power outages in the area could take several days to restore, per a Monday update from the Deseret News.

Wastewater overflow and lingering hazards

Rising water reached the Bloomfield Water Reclamation Facility, sending untreated wastewater into the San Juan River and prompting city officials to ask residents to limit water use. San Juan County's emergency management office warned that bacterial contamination from the overflow posed a health risk even where the water appeared clean. Flood warnings for the Animas River near Farmington and the San Juan River at Farmington and Shiprock remained in effect into the weekend before rivers began to fall Sunday, though officials cautioned that evacuated areas would stay closed while crews checked for downed power lines, ruptured gas lines, washed-out roads and weakened building foundations.

Farther north, in southern Colorado, flooding along the San Juan River and three other waterways proved worse than forecasters had predicted — in one stretch, water ran roughly three feet higher than a flood considered a once-in-a-century event a year earlier, when the same river basin flooded Pagosa Springs. Gov. Jared Polis declared a disaster emergency covering a dozen Colorado counties, and while the state's damage toll was smaller than New Mexico's, about 100 residents were evacuated from their homes and many more were cut off by surrounding floodwaters, according to reporting from NBC News. The Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management said damage assessments would begin this week.

Federal request pending

On Saturday, Lujan Grisham formally asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for an emergency declaration covering San Juan, Rio Arriba, Cibola and Sandoval counties along with the Acoma, Jicarilla Apache, San Ildefonso, Zia and Laguna tribal communities — a request her office said would unlock at least $13.8 million in relief funding plus additional money for environmental cleanup. State officials estimated emergency response costs at $4.5 million so far, with another $13.7 million projected over the following 48 hours. New Mexico's state government had already made $3.75 million available to counties under a broader emergency declaration Lujan Grisham signed in late September, after an earlier round of flooding elsewhere in the state.

"Families in Farmington and Bloomfield need help today, and I implore President Trump to send help immediately," Lujan Grisham said in a statement accompanying the federal request.

As of Monday, neither the Colorado nor the New Mexico request had received a response from the White House or FEMA. Lujan Grisham's office has separately been pressing a request, filed earlier in October, for a major disaster declaration tied to a different round of storms between late September and early October that it says caused $27.1 million in damage to roads and other public infrastructure across 14 counties and three tribal nations — a reminder that this has been an unusually wet autumn across New Mexico even before the weekend's flooding.

What's next

Officials in both states said the immediate priority was finishing damage assessments and restoring power and safe water access before deciding when residents can return home. Shelters remained open at McGee Park, Power House Church and First Baptist Church in Shiprock for those still displaced. The National Weather Service has forecast additional storms moving into the region later this week, raising the possibility of renewed flooding on ground that has not yet dried out. New Mexico's National Guard and State Police, along with a mutual-aid swift-water team from Texas, remained deployed in San Juan County on Monday, continuing patrols of evacuated neighborhoods to deter looting and assist residents retrieving belongings.