SOCORRO, New Mexico (STPNS) -- The San Pedro Fire, which flared up in the bosque near the Rio Grande last Wednesday, was officially declared controlled Tuesday night.

Doug Boykin of New Mexico State Forestry said the fire was essentially contained at 733 acres as of last Thursday.

?We want to watch it for a while to make sure there?s not a spark or any smoke before we declare it controlled,? Boykin said. ?We had people checking for spot fires over the weekend and up until Tuesday.?

According to Jerry Wheeler of the Socorro County Fire Marshal?s office, the fire threatened homes in both the San Pedro and Bosquecito communities.



?It started south of (Highway) 380 at about 12:45 to 1 p.m., and moved north slowly, then got big enough to start spotting over the highway,? Wheeler said. ?One of the more risky situations was when the fire got to the power poles.?

?An order of evacuation was given late in the afternoon and the San Antonio school was prepared to receive people, but our crews were able to keep the blaze away from those structures, except for one,? Wheeler said. ?We lost one unoccupied house in San Pedro.?

He said a crew was in the process of trying to protect the house, but ?there was so much yard debris and brush, it didn?t give us a chance to get in there to protect it.?

?It was not defendable,? Wheeler said. ?We even had a tanker in there, but the fire was moving so fast one of our hoses was scorched.?

?No one actually made it to the school,? he said.

Boykin said the early containment of the wildfire was due to the prompt response and coordination between agencies.

?It exemplified what great communication and coordination we have in Socorro County in a multi-jurisdictional response,? Boykin said.

David Montoya of Socorro Electric Cooperative said crews from SEC arrived on the scene at about 1:15 p.m.

?We have two circuits there. One is for San Antonio and the other for Stallion and Bingham. Both were in danger of burning down,? Montoya said. ?We transferred one circuit and had to cut power on the other one. We lost two 100-foot poles.?

Power was out for two to three hours.

?The two poles there are extra long because of the river crossing, and we had to get with PNM in Albuquerque to have them bring them down and replace the burned ones,? he said.

The poles were replaced by Saturday noon, he said.