Victims of N.M. Fire Take Stock

Sandy Gilmore kicked through the charred remains Monday of what was once her mobile home, reduced by a mountain fire to steel girders on a cinder block foundation.

“All the clothes are gone, but the hangers are lined up on the ground,” said Gilmore, 46, sorting through the blackened debris that was her closet.

Her Yorkie-mix dog, Poochie, has been missing since Saturday when the blaze hopscotched through Gilmore’s subdivision in the Sacramento Mountains, forcing the evacuation of 1,300 people and destroying 28 homes.

No one was injured, but there was little else for Gilmore and her neighbors to cheer about when they returned home Monday. Smoke still curled from a hot spot about 500 yards away from the end of Gilmore’s cul de sac.

The initial damage estimate by the Lincoln County assessor’s office was $5.2 million.

Gov. Gary Johnson said the south-central New Mexico blaze, which charred about 960 acres, started when a resident dumped fireplace ash in a backyard in the mistaken belief the ashes were cold. Wind gusting almost 60 mph churned the flames.

That blaze was fully contained Monday night as firefighters continued to mop up. But another fire burned on more than 16,400 acres in the nearby mountains of the Mescalero Apache Reservation. The area was declared a state disaster.

Nina Pedroni and her husband, Steve, were watching from a ridge Saturday as the blaze raced closer to their mobile home. The flames stopped about 50 feet short of their home.

“We got here and there was ash on our house,” she said. “The smoke detectors were going crazy.”