SUN Staff Report
9/10/09
A fire that broke out at an Española propane gas company was referred to the state Fire Marshal’s office after it was deemed suspicious, according to the Española Fire Department.
An office building at Ferrell Gas company on Riverside Drive went up in flames Sunday around 4 a.m., Fire Chief John Kitchen said. The flames were suppressed within about five minutes of firefighters’ arrival, Kitchen said. No injuries reported and the building was empty at the time of the blaze.
The fire aroused suspicion because a south-side window on the wood and adobe building was broken, with more glass on the inside than the outside, Kitchen said. Had the window burst from the heat of the fire, more glass would likely have been found outside, he said. Instead, it appeared as though someone threw something through the window and gained entry. A lack of obvious electrical sources for the fire inside the office also added to the suspiciousness of the fire, Kitchen said.
“It’s kind of steering toward arson at this point,” Española Police Sgt. Richard Gallegos said. “They still have to look at everything inside, electrical or gas leaks that could have contributed to the fire.”
Fortunately, the only full gas tanks at the business were on the other side of the yard from the blaze, Kitchen noted, otherwise, the tanks could have exploded. The Fire Marshal’s office took samples of paper from the scene that they will test for hydrocarbons, which would indicate the presence of an accelerant, Kitchen said.
An office inside the building that held company records was totally ruined, and adjoining offices also had significant smoke and fire damage, Kitchen said. Firefighters cut a hole in the roof to dampen hot spots inside, and some of the roof beams were warped from the flames’ heat.
Gallegos said police haven’t determined whether the fire is related to a break-in at Ferrell Sept. 2. That burglary is believed to be related to other recent burglaries throughout the city, in which the suspect or suspects enters a building through a small window hole. Ferrell was ransacked and a cash box containing mostly small change was gutted, Gallegos said. Nothing was stolen during the fire.
Police believe the burglaries are the work of a skinny person.
“The reason we say (the suspect is) small and slim is because the windows that we’ve been finding broken — I mean he’s just crawling like a worm right through. Which tells us this guy’s really thin,” Gallegos said.
Ferrell Gas was closed Tuesday and manager Alfonso Ortiz didn’t return a call for comment.
SUN Staff Report
If the New Mexico Municipal League has their way, public legal notices will no longer have to appear in a newspaper.
A measure introduced by Española Mayor Joseph Maestas Sept. 4 at the League’s annual conference would allow entities required by law to publicly post legal notices to include television, radio and Internet as allowable media for posting. Currently, only newspapers of general circulation in a given area qualify under the state Administrative Code.
The League’s reasoning for passing the measure was a matter both of logistics and economy, District 1 Española City Councilor Danielle Duran said. Duran is the alternate voting member for the city, and would have taken Maestas’ place had he been unable to attend.
“Most of it was supported by small rural communities served by one newspaper or less,” she said. “They were saying, ‘We need to be able to follow the law,’ but they have no real way to do that. Those kinds of stories were really compelling to me.”
Smaller communities also cited the cost of placing long ads in newspapers as a reason to support the measure.
Legal ads are used to advertise such events as pending lawsuits, public meetings, public construction and services bids and impending votes on ordinances or elections. In the Rio Grande SUN, these ads run between 100 and 1,000 words and cost between $20 and $200 each, depending on their ad.
Opponents of the measure call it a flawed idea. Radio and television spots cost more than newspaper ads, with a high risk that most residents of a community will simply not receive the information, said Dana Bowley, the executive director of the New Mexico Press Association.
“It’s just a bad idea on so many levels,” he said. “The thing about legal ads in a paper is they’re right there. You don’t have to already know to look for them to find out what’s going on. Radio and TV are chiefly entertainment medias, they’re not information-providing media. Whose going to sit through someone reading a thousand-word legal ad or hunt through every community’s web site to find that information?”
The League will push to sponsor a bill on this issue in the 2010 legislative session.