El Paso’s Coach Reichman fears his home in Ruidoso is hit by the wildfires

RUIDOSO, New Mexico (KVIA) -- Former state champion soccer coach Bruce Reichman, who's retired from his job as an educator at Del Valle High School, tells ABC-7 that he thinks there's "more of a chance than not" that his family's cabin in Ruidoso has been hit by the "South Fork" wildfire.

"It's so hard because we're two and a half hours away," said Reichman as he opened up to ABC-7 anchor Paul Cicala from his home in East El Paso.

Although most Ruidoso home owners aren't 100 percent sure what parts of the town have seen structures burned down by the wildfire, Reichman said that he's heard that the popular businessess of Alto Cafe and Swiss Chalet have been hit by the flames, and, his family's cabin is just three minutes away from those businesses.

When asked what his first reaction was when he heard the news of the nearby structures potentially being hit by the wildfire, Reichman responded, "Oh, just sick. Throwing up is what you want to do. My wife hasn't stopped crying once we saw the map of how close that fire was. Knowing that this is part of my retirement and my life savings and things like that that I purchases as part of my kids inheritance, that gets a little nerve wracking."

Riechman also told ABC-7 that he fears for the wild horses that would roam through his property, in addition to other wildlife.

Even though he has insurance for the cabin, Reichman also fears, if he finds his home in ruins, it will just never be the same.

"Some of the things we found and made it real 'cabiney', if that's such a word, my wife did a great job of decorating with and found a lot of antique and old wood stuff, and made it real cozy and 'cabiney', but, some of that stuff will never be replaced," said Reichman, "Maybe we'll be able to rebuild the structure, but, not the labor."

The -labor- of making their getaway cabin a home, with now, the -laborous- task of perhaps starting from scratch for the Reichmans.