Investigators call RR fire suspicious

RIO RANCHO — Investigators are calling a fire that destroyed the 49-year-old clubhouse at Rio Rancho Country Club on Oct. 4 as suspicious but said they hadn’t reached any conclusions.

It took nearly six hours to bring the flames under control, and firefighters were still pouring water on the smoldering clubhouse at 10 a.m. the day after.

Fire investigators were allowed to enter the building that next day, said Mark J. Torres, special agent in charge for the Office of Superintendent of Insurance/ Criminal Division in Albuquerque.

A multiagency task force is working on the case: a Bernalillo County cadaver dog, another special agent from his office, Rio Rancho police and fire and the State Fire Marshal’s Office.

“Nothing was found; we brought in an accelerant dog,” he said, in light of no utilities being hooked up and no reports of any lightning that night. “Ignition points were identified: six separate alerts. It could also mean one single fire grew big enough that it was throwing off ash.”

Work by an out-of-state lab could take one to three weeks to determine whether an accelerant was used to start the fire.

“It’s suspicious,” he said. “I have to do things based on the verbiage of the law. There are two types of arson: negligent (accidental) arson and outright (intentional).”

“We canvassed the neighborhood, requested videos from neighborhood video systems. We were still talking to people in Rio Rancho. We opened the perimeter a little bit.”