The Year of the Fire Horse Reignites Memory of a Carlsbad Legacy

By R. Gabriel Villalobos

A piece of art was commissioned by a former Carlsbad resident and philanthropist–a horse sculpture with a fiery mane and flaming motif that spanned its sides all the way to the tail. Conceived as a fundraiser for an educational arts program, it stood silently for years in the lobby of an emergency response center; a quiet monument to resilience born from catastrophe.

Meg Milligan has been thinking about that horse a lot lately. With 2026 marking the Year of the Fire Horse, according to the Eastern lunar calendar, she felt the time was right to revisit the story of the fiberglass sculpture and the chain of events surrounding it.

"That was a moment when somebody took a tragedy that was just of such awful proportions and turned it into something really good," Milligan said. 

In 2008, she and her husband, Randy, were searching for a creative way to fund a children's theater project they brought to Carlsbad each year. Randy hatched a plan to sponsor one of the decorative horse statues popping up in public art installations across the country, then auction it off and seed an endowment at the Carlsbad Foundation. 

It cost $5,000 to sponsor a horse. They scraped it together and commissioned local artist Gerri Matson, who drew inspiration from the Michael Martin Murphey song, "Wildfire," after which the sculpture was named.  

Sadly, in August 2008, the economy tanked. At auction, some horses sold for less than the cost of their sponsorship. "Wildfire" was one of those horses. That did not rob it of its beauty. Before leaving Carlsbad in the early 2010s, they found a new home for it, one that gave the fiery equine a deeper meaning.

In 2000, a gas leak caused a massive explosion just outside of Carlsbad that killed 12 people. The victims were members of an extended family camping alongside the Pecos River. Milligan had worked with a woman who was part of the family but wasn't able to join the campout. Martha Chapman lost her family to the disaster and filed a lawsuit against El Paso Natural Gas. She was awarded a $10 million settlement and then made a decision that stunned the community.

"She didn't want to profit from the death of her family," Milligan said softly.

The loss of life was staggering. The explosion claimed 12 lives, including two infants in car seats who were in a vehicle attempting to flee. Six people died instantly. The other six lingered in the hospital, some for up to two weeks. The first responders who pulled victims from the wreckage were so traumatized that many could no longer work.

Chapman donated the entire $10 million settlement to build an emergency response training center—a facility designed to better prepare first responders for the kind of horror they encountered there. It was called the Permian Basin Regional Training Center.

When the center opened, Milligan knew where "Wildfire" belonged. She donated the horse to the facility, where it stood in the lobby as a symbol of healing.

"I thought the sculpture would be such a wonderful addition there," she said.

Today, the horse is no longer on display. When asked, Mike Antiporda at the foundation couldn't say where the horse ended up because it had come and gone before his time there. 

Milligan left Carlsbad in 2012, but she hopes people will read this story and remember the mission of the center and the woman who turned unimaginable loss into a lasting gift for her community.

"She wasn't selfish about it at all," Milligan said. "She could have kept the money and just lived life large, but she didn't. And I thought that was amazing."

After some sleuthing, it was discovered that the sculpture is now on display at the Eddy County fire department in Happy Valley. The Permian Basin Training Center, established by Martha Chapman, was purchased in its entirety by Eddy County. Two years ago, they redid the lobby of the main building where Wildfire had been housed and moved her to Happy Valley. Hearing this pleased the Milligans.