Shocking Images Of Mcleod Dam Failing MAJOR FLOOD - NEW MEXICO ALERT

1:47 on Tuesday afternoon, the operators of a dirt dam above the Hatch Valley of New Mexico reported that it was about to fail, and the National Weather Service issued the rarest warning it has: FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY FOR MCLEOD DAM. "This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!" Within hours, five villages along the Rio Grande were told to leave — Rincon, Garfield, Salem, then Hatch, the chile capital of America, then Placitas. Water was already pouring across Interstate 25 near Salem. A levee had broken at the Rincon water plant. The dam is 73 years old, 25 feet high, more than a mile long, rated POOR at its last inspection, classed HIGH HAZARD, with no emergency plan on file. Whether it holds is the difference between five villages and a wall of water — and the people whose job it is to know that had it written down a year before the rain came. IN THIS VIDEO • The warning, minute by minute: 1:47 PM emergency, "Go" orders for Rincon, Garfield and Salem, Hatch at about 6:40 PM, Placitas at 7:45, lifted at 10:46 PM — except Rincon • What the operators found: a "very small piping failure," mitigated; pumps sent to stop the next storm topping the wall • The record: built 1953, 25 ft, 6,774 ft, ~750 acre-feet, poor (July 2023), high hazard, no emergency action plan — and the 194 New Mexico dams rated poor • The contradiction in the record: "spilled over" vs "no water is exiting," and what both can mean • The harvest: 54,675 tons of chile, $54.8 million, and the fields at Garfield under debris • The rest of New Mexico the same night: Albuquerque's 2 inches, a sinkhole in Rio Rancho, a collapsed road near Gallup, Roswell's mayor on channel capacity • The Southwest: 60+ flash floods, 4 inches an hour, 30 million at risk from Arizona to Iowa SOURCES National Weather Service El Paso/Santa Teresa flash flood emergency products (Sept 29, 2026) · U.S. Army Corps of Engineers National Inventory of Dams (via FOX Weather, KTSM, KRWG) · Doña Ana County statements (Ariana Parra; Stephen Lopez) · Albuquerque Journal (Sept 29) · Las Cruces Sun-News (Sept 29–30) · KRWG Public Media (Sept 29; Sept 30, 5:06 AM update) · KVIA (Sept 29) · Santa Fe New Mexican (Sept 29) · KOB 4 (Sept 29) · KOAT Target 7 · CBS News (Sept 29) · AP (Sept 30) · weather.com (Sept 30) · USDA NASS, 2025 New Mexico Chile Production (Mar 6, 2026) · NM State Police (Sgt. Ricardo Breceda) Crisis Radar covers the water, the ground and the structures Americans live on top of. Every number in this video is from a named public source. This is a developing situation: figures are as of the KRWG update at 5:06 AM Mountain time, Wednesday, September 30, 2026. As of that report the dam had not failed, four of the five villages had been allowed home, and Rincon remained under an evacuation order. #McLeodDam #NewMexico #Hatch #FlashFloodEmergency #DamFailure #HurricanePolo #DonaAnaCounty #RioGrande #CrisisRadar