Residents near the New Mexico-Colorado border were jolted by a blast Tuesday afternoon that shook the ground, knocked out electricity and sent a towering column of flames into the sky.
Dave Valdez was inside his garage near La Boca when he heard it.
“It wasn’t just a pop; it sounded like somebody just turned on an F-16 right next to me and left it running,” Valdez said. “It was loud, intense. I felt the ground shake a little bit right before my electricity went off.”
He rushed to the front of his house and saw a wall of fire rising above the oil and gas fields. “At that point, I knew immediately that it was oil field-related,” he said.
Valdez estimated the flames reached 150 feet or more and stretched nearly as wide.
The Los Pinos Fire District later said the pipeline explosion produced flames estimated at 50 to 100 feet high, while nearby shrubs and trees were burned or remained burning.
The explosion was reported at about 2 p.m. in the La Boca area of San Juan County, near the Colorado border.
Valdez, who has spent most of his life in the area, said the scale of the fire was unlike anything he had seen before.
“I’ve lived here my whole life pretty much – other than military time – but most of my life,” he said. “I have never, ever experienced that degree of a fire in the oil field or anything even close to that.”
The intense roar and flames continued for about 45 minutes before the fire began to subside, Valdez said. A lower-level flame remained visible for roughly two hours.
He estimated the explosion occurred between a half-mile and three-quarters of a mile south of his home along County Road 4046.
A friend who works in the gas industry told Valdez the blast was likely caused by a ruptured pipeline that had been operating under about 400 to 500 pounds of pressure. That assessment had not been independently confirmed.
Marzine Smith also witnessed the explosion.
She and a neighbor were driving north toward Ignacio when she suddenly saw a huge tower of fire in her rear-view mirror. “It was like an oil well catching on fire,” Smith said. “You see the big fire going up like 200, 300 feet. That’s what it looked like. It was massive.”
Smith said emergency responders rushed toward the scene, including two or three ambulances traveling south on Colorado Highway 172.
The size of the fire immediately raised questions about whether anyone had been working near the pipeline when it ruptured. “If workers had been anywhere near the well pad, there would have been injuries or worse,” Smith said.
Emergency crews converged on the area as the pipeline fire ignited surrounding vegetation, turning the incident into a wildland fire.
Los Pinos Fire District responded under a mutual-aid arrangement, according to San Juan County spokesman Devin Neeley. “This is a pipeline fire; it has been shut in and the surrounding wildland fire is smoldering,” Neeley said.
Harvest Midstream Co. spokesman Jerrod T. Jones said crews responded after the explosion and stopped the flow of gas to the affected portion of the system.
“Crews responded, the flow of gas to this portion of the system was stopped, and crews continue to coordinate with first responders as they address conditions in the surrounding area,” Jones said in an email Tuesday night.
No injuries were reported, and all crew members were accounted for, Jones said.
The cause of the explosion was not immediately known.
Firefighters, ambulances and law enforcement officers gathered along nearby dirt roads as crews monitored the scene and worked to contain the smoldering vegetation.
By about 5:30 p.m., Valdez said he still had not heard an official explanation for what caused the blast.
The sheer force of the explosion was already etched into memory of residents who witnessed the fire. “It was loud, intense,” Valdez said. “I have never, ever experienced that degree of a fire in the oil field or anything even close to that.”
