Locals return to remnants of home after Los Lunas fire

LOS LUNAS — The bright pink liquid had long dried, coating the sidewalks, trees and vehicles of Las Rosas Drive in Los Lunas on Tuesday afternoon, filling the otherwise burned and blackened neighborhood with pops of color.

The fire retardant was dropped from an air tanker as it roared overhead days earlier to douse the Desert Willow Complex Fire, a blaze that jumped from the riverside forest to an adjacent neighborhood on June 21, torching homes and sending residents fleeing.

Valencia County Fire Chief Matt Propp said watching a DC-10 tanker drop nearly 10,000 gallons of retardant onto a neighborhood was something he had never seen. But it was necessary, he said, as firefighters were being overrun and forced to decide “which homes we were going to be able to save and which we weren’t.”

“We were at risk of losing a few neighborhoods at that point if we couldn’t get quick control,” Propp said in an interview Wednesday. “We realized nothing on the ground was going to be able to stop this fire.”

He estimated that, without the tanker drops, they might have lost 20 to 30 more homes, and possibly some lives.

Andrea Sanchez’s home was one of 10 that burned to the ground. Sanchez saw the beginning of the blaze, then a small house fire, on Saturday but believed firefighters would quickly get a handle on the situation.

“It looked like they had it under control,” she said of the fire she spotted leaving home. “I did not think it was going to jump like that. Never did I think this would have happened.”

She went to the store for 10 minutes but returned to a house — the first she had ever owned — engulfed in flames.

“My house was the last one to burn,” Sanchez said.

On Saturday, multiple houses went up in flames as the Desert Willow Complex Fire — originally called the Cotton Fire but renamed because the two fires were in the same area and managed by the same incident command — burned over 260 acres and half a block of houses, just west of the Rio Grande. Roughly 1,300 people were evacuated due to the fire.

The same day, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham obtained federal emergency funding to send additional firefighting crews, engines and air support to combat the fire.

Valencia County Commission Chairman Gerard Saiz said the fire was “one of the worst in my recollection.”

“I’m not aware of one that has taken out as many homes or acres as this one,” he said. “The community really came together. There were so many donations that came through that they had even more than they needed.”

All Sanchez was able to save from her home was her 17-year-old son — who didn’t realize the danger upon smelling smoke in the air — and her two dogs. Before fleeing, Sanchez said she tried to hose down weeds around her home that were quickly turning to kindling. “Our efforts were in vain,” she said.

Though Sanchez wishes she would have been clear-minded enough to grab important documents — such as her son’s birth certificate — she has no regrets.

“Everything else is replaceable,” she said. “I got what matters the most to me, which would be my son and my dogs.”

Tuesday afternoon, Sanchez spent her day sifting through the ashy remains of her home with a pair of gloves tightly strapped to her hands, desperate to find any remainder of the three-bedroom house she spent eight years in and thousands of dollars renovating that included a study area for her homeschooled son.

All she could find was a Halloween mug and a wrought iron sign with the word “faith.” Some part of her was happy to find anything at all, but “it’s not what I worked so hard for,” she said.

If Sanchez wasn’t juggling enough, she also dealt with someone who falsely claimed that her residence was someone else’s home on GoFundMe, a crowdfunding platform. The post was taken down shortly after Sanchez reported it, but the damage had been done.

“She said her sister’s house caught on fire, but it was my house,” she said. “I felt like she was trying to capitalize on somebody else’s pain. Isn’t that sick?”

Sandra Valois has returned every day since her house ignited, standing guard over rubble and ashes. Valois said she and her family are concerned looters will take advantage of the disarray and take the few things left of the home they lived in for 12 years.

Valois was able to recover her engagement ring and a matching ring she has with her sister. But the most valuable find was a set of unscathed photos — including some of her father and her grandmother.

At one point, Valois stopped to watch as dozens of cars paraded through the area. She said it’s a strange feeling watching cars drive by, people rolling down their windows to film the burned neighborhood — bursts of neon pink coating roof shingles.

“It doesn’t really bother me because people are just interested, but it definitely feels like a zoo,” Valois said.

The Valencia County Sheriff’s Office announced Wednesday that Jacob LaHair, 31, of Los Lunas was charged with arson and criminal damage to property in connection with the fire.

As investigators were looking for an arson suspect Tuesday, Valois and Sanchez had strong words for the perpetrator.

“I hope you get what you deserve,” Sanchez said. “I hope they catch you to make you pay for what you’ve done to the 12 families that are now displaced, not at home, and not together with their families.”