Nicholas Gilmore
The Santa Fe New Mexican
(TNS)
Aug. 22—J. Sánchez said he was on a video call Wednesday afternoon when he heard a “pop” outside his home in Madrid. He went out to look and was horrified to find years of his hard work going up in smoke.
“When I saw the flames, I about had a heart attack,” he said.
Sánchez said he was days from finishing a yearslong passion project, creating a turn-of-the-century setting for film productions at his Scaramanga Movie Ranch when a fire destroyed much of his progress, along with a large collection of antiques and artifacts, a 1972 Rolls Royce and some animals.
He had been working for about four years building the 1910 “township” setting, with the help of ranch hands.
“We will start over,” he said Thursday. “It’s just painful to see something you built with your own hands — just gone.”
The blaze burned a structure he described as a portico that was filled with all kinds of vintage and handcrafted items, his personal records and a massive collection of tools.
The fire also killed several exotic chickens and pheasants that were kept in an aviary nearby, he said.
Sánchez said he used a garden hose to try to stop the fire from spreading to his home while he struggled to find a cellphone signal to dial 911.
Santa Fe County firefighters were dispatched to the site around 2 p.m. and had contained the fire about an hour later with help from volunteer firefighting crews from Hondo, Eldorado, La Cienega and Madrid, as well as the Santa Fe Fire Department, county spokesperson Olivia Romo said.
County firefighters did not make a determination about the cause of the fire, Romo wrote in an email. The State Fire Marshal’s Office opened an investigation.
Sánchez said firefighters ruled out arson.
He expressed gratitude for the “incredible amount of firefighting force” that arrived at his home to extinguish the blaze, including volunteers from surrounding departments.
One person was evaluated by medical staff at the site, but Romo confirmed “no severe injuries or fatalities were reported.”
Smoke from the fire could be seen from several miles away.
The adobe house on the property, where Sánchez lives with his wife, suffered some structural damage but is still livable, he said.
Sánchez closed on the 25-acre ranch in Madrid in 2017 and renamed the site after the villain Francisco Scaramanga from the 1974 James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun.
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