Rosario Montoya was walking from her son’s home on her way to bring her husband a plate of turkey on Thanksgiving Day when a passing motorist honked his horn to alert Montoya that smoke was coming from the mobile home where she lived with her husband Demacio.
Rosario Montoya tried but could not open the door to the Chimayó home because her 80-year-old husband had locked it from the inside — something he would mistakenly do sometimes because he had Alzheimer’s disease. Montoya, who can’t walk and uses a scooter, tried to break a window to get inside.
The driver exited his car and pulled Rosario back from the fire, Demacio Montoya’s granddaughter Karen DeAguero said.
“The plate never made it over there,” Demacio Montoya’s stepson Harby DeAguero said.
When four firefighters removed Demacio Montoya from the structure just off of State Road 76, where he was lying in the kitchen, he was still alive but his heart had stopped beating, Santa Fe County Fire Department spokesman Eric Wheeler said. An emergency helicopter had already been dispatched to the scene and met paramedics working on Montoya at the open space near the old appleshed in Chimayó. Before he could be flown out, Montoya was pronounced dead at around 12 p.m., according to Wheeler and Karen DeAguero.
Authorities believe Montoya died from smoke inhalation because he was not burned by the fire, Wheeler said.
Demacio Montoya had been employed in the past as a miner near Mesa, Ariz., the DeAgueros said. In recent years though, the onset of Alzheimer’s caused him to often forget his relatives, Karen DeAguero said. Nevertheless, Karen DeAguero said Montoya kept his sense of humor.
“He was funny,” DeAguero said. “He tried to joke around with you.”
In addition to the Chimayó and Santa Fe County fire departments, the La Puebla, Pojoaque and Tesuque fire departments assisted in dousing the 10-foot flames engulfing the back portion of the structure, Chimayo Fire Chief Julian Sandoval said.
The fire burned through an electrical line running to the trailer, which caused different parts of the line to arc. This could have led the fire to spread, Sandoval said. Consequently, Harby DeAguero still didn’t have electricity at his next-door house as of Nov. 28, and was running a generator on the porch.
Sandoval said an overloaded wood burning stove caused the roof to catch fire (see sidebar). The stove was located in an adjoining room built onto the trailer and had been in the house approximately five years, Karen DeAguero said. The stovepipe had recently been replaced, she said.
Michael Coriz, the brother of Rio Arriba County Commissioner Elias Coriz, put a log on the fire that morning, Karen DeAguero said. Rosario Montoya paid Michael Coriz to help her and her husband around the house. That evening, after hearing about the fire, he came to the house to check on the Montoyas.
“He felt very bad,” Karen DeAguero said. “It wasn’t his fault — we told him not to blame himself.”
The Red Cross put Rosario Montoya and Harby DeAguero in a room at the Ohkay Casino Nov. 29, Karen DeAguero said.
The Montoyas have owned the property for approximately 50 years, Karen DeAguero said. In an unfortunate coincidence, a week before Thanksgiving in 1979, two adobe houses on the property belonging to the Montoyas burned down.
Montoya’s death was the second fatality caused by fire in Chimayó in a two-week period. Vicente Martinez, 78, died of third-degree burns Nov. 16 while asleep in the same room with a wood-burning stove.
Hazards of Single-Wall Stovepipe
A certain type of wood stove is believed to have caused the fires that killed two elderly Chimayó men within 10 days of each other last month, Chimayó Fire Chief Julian Sandoval said.
Both men utilized a single-wall stovepipe, a cost-cutting option many homeowners choose without realizing the dangers they pose, particularly to mobile homes, Sandoval said.
“The piping is too close to combustible material up on the roof area,” Sandoval said. “The main issue we’ve been having is people using the single-wall stovepipes rather than the triple-wall.”
Both double- and triple-wall stovepipes create a buffer of air between the smoke and flames inside the pipe and any materials outside the pipe. However, a single-wall stovepipe does not have this same buffer and is much less expensive, Sandoval noted.
An Española hardware store employee pointed out a popular type of single-wall stovepipe that sells for $8.99 for a two-foot section, and has an open seam that fastens together. On the other hand, a double-wall stovepipe at the same store costs $47.99 — five times the cost of the single-wall — and a triple-wall stovepipe cost $69.99. Though drastically less expensive than the other types of stovepipe, this is the most dangerous stove pipe, particularly in mobile homes, the employee noted.
Sandoval said he contacted the state Human Services Department to find out if Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) money covers upgrading stovepipe, but discovered it does not.
If it is not possible to replace single-wall pipe, Sandoval said it’s particularly important not to overload those stoves.
“One or two logs would more than suffice,” Sandoval said.