ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – It might be just the third week of the new year, but for small communities across New Mexico, they’ve already been hit by several storms.

“The roads have been cleared as best as they can, I mean, with this hard freeze coming in, that’s made that kind of grind to a halt. Plus, you know, crews needing to rest over this last couple of days,” said Kris Lawrence, Union County emergency manager.

Lawrence says crews in Clayton have been putting in a lot of overtime following last week’s blizzard-like conditions. No one was hurt, but dozens of residents were stranded. 

Lawrence says it’ll take some time before everything is back to normal.

Just last Friday, there was a power outage. Crews were able to get the lights back on but if it happens again, and they aren’t able to reach residents, they have a plan in place.

“We would have been reached out to our churches, those are usually our first ones to be contacted to be temporary shelters for people. Now if we had a county-wide power outage, we’d actually have no resources available as like a warming shelter for people, and it would be just sheltering in place,” said Lawrence. 

About four and a half hours away in Sandoval County, Cuba Mayor Denny Herrera says the majority of roads in the village are county or state roads.

Herrera says the village roads are mostly in residential areas, which residents can call in. As for the sidewalks, it’s a give and take as their crews work around the Department of Transportation. 

“Anytime it snows like that, it doesn’t make any sense for us to remove the snow from the sidewalks immediately because the snow plows are going up and down the road from the DOT. And they’re just throwing it on the sidewalk. So it’s like a back-and-forth game,” said Herrera. 

Cuba and Sandoval County as a whole don’t have emergency shelters available for people to escape the cold, but County Manager Wayne Johnson says they have set up centers in the past.

“13 years ago I called it freeze-mageddon where we had -30 degrees in the East Mountains of Bernalillo County, and we set up warming centers and that sort of thing. Should we have that type of cold in northern Sandoval? Should it become necessary? Then, of course, we will respond,” said Johnson.