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LAS CRUCES - New Mexico State University photojournalism student Rhona Holden was headed to class just a few minutes before 2 p.m. Thursday when she smelled smoke - thick and acrid.
"It didn't smell like leaves burning," said Holden, 45.
She went around the corner, to the 1600 block of Mariposa Drive, a neighborhood just east of the Las Cruces Country Club, and found smoke and flames shooting from the roof of a home on fire.
"The neighbors were out there, trying to keep it under control with their garden hoses," Holden said. "It took 17 minutes from the time that (the Las Cruces Fire Department) were called to assist at the fire to when they finally showed up. This place was completely under fire by the time they got there."
The woman who lives at the home was there at the time the fire started, but wasn't aware until passers-by, noticing smoke, were able to alert her to the fire. She and her two dogs were safely evacuated, said Las Cruces Police Department spokesman Dan Trujillo. The majority of the flames were extinguished within minutes of the firefighters' arrival, and hot spots were put out within an hour, but the brick home appeared to have suffered extensive damage throughout from flames and smoke.
After firefighters arrived, two motorcycles and an all-terrain vehicle in the garage are thought to have exploded, said Trujillo, who said no foul play is suspected.
Four doors down from the fire, Sarah Heartsong, 40, was home with a sick child when she heard
"I could feel it," she said. "It rocked the house. It vibrated the house."
This was no car backfiring, she thought.
"I looked outside and there were fire trucks all over," she said. "I went down the street and saw my neighbors and saw the flames shooting out of the house."
Luckily, the home next door to the fire, with its roof just a few feet from the flames, did not also catch fire - neighbors had been dousing it with garden hoses before the firefighters showed up to blast it with water.
"From what I understand, a crew was working outside and came to (the victims') door saying they had to get out of the house right then, that their house was on fire. They were totally in shock," Heartsong said. "Luckily, they got out, and everybody appears to be safe."
By Thursday evening, fire investigators still on scene had not declared an official cause of the fire, but some speculated the home, in a suburb built in the mid-1960s, might have had old wiring.
"One of the neighbors said they had seen sparks coming from the garage," Holden said.
Heartsong, who was born and raised in her home, said the fire was the first in the neighborhood - and she wants it to be the last.
"Interestingly, a month ago I was saying, 'I want to get an electrician in and check my wires,'" she said. "This house was built in 1965. It's got old wiring. I don't know what the cause is (of Thursday's fire) but it makes me think, because it's too close to home, literally."
Ashley Meeks can be reached at (575) 541-5462
