'Black Death' still plagues New Mexico

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Five days after disposing of a dead squirrel near his Mountainair home, Carl Hollon woke up feeling low.

"(It was) summertime, wind was blowing," Hollon, 78, said. "I got a chill, couldn’t stop shaking. So I went back in the house, wrapped in a blanket, sat there for awhile and finally got calmed down."

But the next morning, he woke up with a fever of 102 degrees, which rose to 104 degrees by that afternoon. At that point, Hollon’s wife insisted he go to the emergency room.

That was a very good thing because Hollon had contracted the black death – otherwise known as bubonic plague. And he wasn’t alone.

Since the 1970s, the most plague cases reported in the United States have occurred in New Mexico. But back then, and into the 1980s, plague was found mainly in rural or poor housing conditions.

However, a new study in this month’s issue of “Emerging Infectious Diseases,” published by the Centers for Disease Control, shows that plague has been surfacing in wealthy areas of two of the state’s biggest cities.

"In the areas surrounding Santa Fe and Albuquerque where new houses are being built in areas that are good areas for plague activity, we were seeing more human cases," said Dr. Joan Baumbach of the state Department of Health’s Infectious Disease and Epidemiology Bureau.

Scientists call these areas--often new housing developments in the wilderness--“wild reservoirs of plague” and say they often include ground squirrel and wood rat habitat.

And those new houses mean that a whole new group of people need to be aware of and avoid fleas, which transfer plague from rodents to people and pets.

"They might be going out on a walk where there are nests or burrows that rodents have died (in) and the fleas are jumping out," Baumbach said.

Hollon spent 10 days in the hospital recovering from the disease.

"I'd level out and then that fever would come back," he said. "I was sweating (so much I would) drown the bed and everything in it."

Luckily, an alert emergency room doctor started Hollon on antibiotics before plague was diagnosed. And as Hollon slowly recovered, the emergency room doctor shared a sobering thought.

"He said, 'If you had been hard-headed enough to pass it up for another six hours, you’d never have made it out of (the hospital),'" Hollon continued. "He said, ‘It would have got you.'"

Hollon said he decided to talk toKRQE News 13 because he wanted his neighbors and others to know about the problem. Since his recovery, Hollon has been getting rid of brush piles on his property, cleaning sheds and counting his blessings.

"So the good Lord was with me," he said.