Monday was not a good day for two local firefigthers.
First an Española firefighter and her family lost their Medanales home to a fire early in the morning. Then, the blaze led to an altercation between the County Emergency Medical Services director and the Abiquiú Fire Department’s suspended chief.
Firefighter Theresa Martinez lived in a mobile home on the east side of Highway 84, north of State Road 233, with her four children and her brother. She said she and her children were in Denver, Colo., when the fire broke out at about 5:30 a.m., but her brother, John Dolt, was in the trailer at the time. No one was injured in the blaze.
Dolt said he thinks the heat from the fire woke him up.
“I just remember opening my eyes and seeing flames everywhere,” he said.
State Fire Marshal spokesman Paul Carbajal said the fire has been deemed “accidental,” though it is still being investigated. He said investigators believe a cigarette that fell into the cushions of a couch started the fire, and Dolt woke up and attempted to extinguish the couch using a towel or blanket.
“It just made it worse,” Carbajal said.
Carbajal said two gallons of airplane fuel that were sitting outside the trailer helped accelerate the blaze. Martinez said it wasn’t actually airplane fuel, but rather fuel her brother used to race remote-controlled planes and cars.
Dolt said he was unable to save his possessions, but his dogs escaped the burning home. He said Martinez’s dog was missing following the fire, and Dolt had several large aquariums that were lost.
Firefighters from Agua Sana, Abiquiú and El Rito responded to the call. Abiquiú firefigther Paulette Jordan said she was on the scene minutes after receiving word of the fire, but the trailer was already consumed in flames.
Former Abiquiú fire chief Phillip Trujillo also responded to the fire, but he was confronted by County Emergency Medical Services Director Mateo DeVargas who told Trujillo that he was not allowed at the scene. Abiqiuiú firefighter Rick Quintana said Trujillo and DeVargas started pushing each other after Trujillo was told to leave.
“They both got a little physical,” he said.
Police were not called to the scene, and Trujillo eventually left.
“It kind of started getting ugly,” Trujillo said of Monday’s confrontation.
Trujillo said DeVargas told him to leave the scene, but Trujillo thought any assistance he could give would be helpful. He said he told DeVargas he does not recognize his authority.
“I work for the village of Abiquiú. I don’t work for them,” he said. “Mateo may have got hurt if he kept it up. He’s lucky I just left.”
Trujillo was suspended in August after he drove a volunteer to Española Hospital in the department’s emergency rescue vehicle in July even though he does not have the proper medical certification (see related story on page A16).
This was not the first time Trujillo has wrangled with County employees. In 2006, DeVargas and County Fire Marshal Jerome Sanchez berated Trujillo and his father for responding to a fire near Coyote. They said Trujillo left the Abiquiú area unprotected, a SUN report from the time states. The report also states Sanchez called Sheriff’s deputies to defuse the situation, and Trujillo sought a restraining order against DeVargas and Sanchez following the incident.
DeVargas said no nearby homes were threatened by the trailer fire, but the brake lights of a Honda Goldwing parked in a small shed behind the mobile home were partially melted and the leaves of a tree near the home were scorched. By 9:30 a.m. the flames had been put out.
Dolt and Martinez said they are uninsured. Money can be donated to help the family at the Bank of America, where an account was started in Martinez’s name.