El Paso, Texas: Loud Booms Heard Across the West Side Before Fire Guts Vacant Santa Teresa Country Club

Residents across Santa Teresa, New Mexico, and West El Paso, Texas, heard two loud booms late Tuesday night. About six hours later, firefighters found the clubhouse at the vacant Santa Teresa Country Club in flames. By Wednesday, the FBI and a county bomb squad had joined the effort to learn whether the booms and the fire are connected.

The first boom came shortly before 11 p.m. on Tuesday, and a second followed a few minutes later. Home security cameras recorded the sounds. Jordan Hayda, a Sunland Park resident, said a boom shook her stone home late Tuesday night, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported. Dona Ana County Sheriff Kim Stewart said she received the first calls about the noise at about 11:30 p.m. Deputies patrolled the area overnight and found nothing unusual at the time.

Fire at the vacant clubhouse

Crews were sent at about 4:55 a.m. on Wednesday to the Santa Teresa Country Club at 75 Feather Moon Drive. Firefighters from Dona Ana County and the Sunland Park Fire Department found a clubhouse building engulfed in flames. They brought the fire under control within 45 minutes and stayed at the scene to put out hot spots, county spokeswoman Ariana Parra said. No injuries were reported. The club has been permanently closed for years after financial troubles.

Federal agents join the investigation

County fire investigators are working to determine whether the booms were linked to the fire, Parra said. The bomb squad of the Dona Ana County Sheriff's Office is taking part, and FBI agents are at the scene assisting. The FBI is not the lead agency, Margot Cravens, a spokeswoman for the FBI Albuquerque division, said in an email. "I'm not 100% ruling out that they are unrelated, but I can't also with 100% confidence say that they're related at this point in time," Parra said at a briefing on Wednesday. "The investigation is ongoing and we are working on the incident as a whole including both the fire and the booms." The entrance to the property remains cordoned off, and the cause of the fire is under investigation by the Dona Ana Fire Marshal's Office.

Not the Project Jupiter site

Officials said the fire is completely unrelated to Project Jupiter, the large data center project planned nearby that drew speculation on social media after the booms. "I want to dispel any rumors flying around that it was [related to] Project Jupiter. It was not," Parra said. Authorities asked residents to stay clear of the scene and to report emergencies to 911.