After emergency crews in rural New Mexico became sick responding to what started as an overdose call, investigators said they found fentanyl and methamphetamine at the home in Mountainair, east of Albuquerque—an episode that left three people dead and at least one emergency responder and another person inside the house still receiving treatment Friday.
Authorities said the initial call came to Torrance County about a man who was unconscious but breathing. Dispatch audio from the Torrance County Fire Dispatch channel shows responders were told within minutes that additional people were at the house and that some might not be breathing, prompting a call for naloxone, the opioid-overdose antidote, as crews attempted to help the people they found.
In a later account of what happened at the scene, Torrance County Fire Chief Gary Smith said responders did not have protective gear when they arrived and began treatment under safety protocols. He said the first responders pulled two victims into the fresh air and attempted resuscitation, and that there was “no indication of any type of hazmat type scenario.” Debriefings were planned in coming days to determine whether there were any weaknesses in the response.
At a news conference in Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Hospital Chief Medical Officer Steve McLaughlin said doctors who examined the sickened responders had symptoms that “most closely resembled fentanyl exposure,” including nausea and dizziness. McLaughlin said authorities were working “under the assumption” that fentanyl was to blame, and he said the responders’ symptoms ranged from mild to slightly more severe.
McLaughlin also told The Associated Press that fentanyl was “probably not absorbed through your skin,” but it would be absorbed through “your eyes, nose, mucous membranes, or if you inhale it.” Authorities noted during the briefing that the responders who became ill had directly treated the people found inside the house.
New Mexico State Police Chief Matt Broom said investigators did not immediately find evidence of drug manufacturing in the house. State police said early on that they did not believe there was a threat to the public and that investigators did not believe the substance that sickened responders was airborne, even as more details about how the exposure happened and what caused the responders to become ill remained under investigation.
Officials said more than a dozen first responders were quarantined and decontaminated after answering the scene. They said of the two people still hospitalized Friday, one was a person who had been found unresponsive in the home where three died, and another was an emergency responder.
Authorities identified two of the three people who died: Mika Rascon, 51, and Georgia Rascon, 49. They did not release the name of the third person who died, and they said the cause and manner of that third death had not been determined.
The incident occurred as residents around Mountainair, a town of fewer than 1,000 people, voiced frustration about drug use in the community and elsewhere. New Mexico had the fourth-highest rate of drug overdose deaths of any U.S. state in 2024, with 775 deaths, according to the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data available.
Scientific evidence cited by authorities says fentanyl, a potent opioid, does not cause overdoses through casual skin contact or brief airborne exposure in typical field scenarios, and experts say overdoses generally require significant ingestion, injection, or inhalation. In this case, officials said the investigation was ongoing as they worked to determine how exposure occurred during an overdose response.