A clear sky. Low 61F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..
A clear sky. Low 61F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.
Air crews attack Thursday's Slate Fire west of Jamestown.
Fire crews jumped into action about 2:30 pm. Thursday after a report of a fire off Highway 108 near Chicken Ranch Road.
An air tank drops retardant on Thursday's Slate Fire west of Jamestown.
The Slate Fire had burned 63 acres west of Jamestown as of about 5 p.m. Thursday, with 10% containment.
An air tanker drops retardant on a 30-acre fire that broke out Thursday afternoon south of Highway 108 and Chicken Ranch Road near Hurst Ranch in Jamestown.
Air crews attack Thursday's Slate Fire west of Jamestown.
Fire crews jumped into action about 2:30 pm. Thursday after a report of a fire off Highway 108 near Chicken Ranch Road.
An air tank drops retardant on Thursday's Slate Fire west of Jamestown.
The Slate Fire had burned 63 acres west of Jamestown as of about 5 p.m. Thursday, with 10% containment.
An air tanker drops retardant on a 30-acre fire that broke out Thursday afternoon south of Highway 108 and Chicken Ranch Road near Hurst Ranch in Jamestown.
A fast-moving brush fire broke out Thursday afternoon and charred at least 60 acres while firefighters on the ground and in the air worked in 100 degrees temperatures and hotter in a mix of hillside ranchland, ranch homes, and grassland south of Highway 108 and west of Jamestown.
Cal Fire called it the Slate Fire and by 4:25 p.m. it had burned an estimated 63 acres with several groups of ranch homes under evacuation advisories. Forward progress of the fire was stopped and critical infrastructure, including numerous power lines criss-crossing rural properties, remained threatened.
Bell Mooney Road was closed for a time between Highway 108 and Jacksonville Road. Command staff estimated the fire was 10 percent contained as of 4:25 p.m. No confirmed information about the cause of the fire was available. There was talk in one rural neighborhood that the fire started near railroad tracks.
Pilots in helicopters, including a red-and-white dual-rotor Chinook, drew water from ponds and other small reservoirs on both sides of Highway 108 to drop on the smokey inferno. Firefighters on the ground hauled hundreds of yards of hoses into smoldering grasslands to fight the blaze up close. Other firefighters used hoses to try to cool down water tank trucks and fire engines standing by for structure protection at the end of paved roads painted red by retardant-dropping tanker planes.
No injuries were reported and no structures had burned in the fire as of 4:30 p.m., a Cal Fire spokesperson said.
At one property off Bell Mooney Road, Bill Carloss, 69, used a garden hose to wet down his lawn about 3:15 p.m. while tanker planes and helicopters took turns dropping on some of the hottest parts of the fire a few hundred yards distant.
“I just moved her five months ago from Modesto,” Carloss hollered, raising his voice above the roar of multiple aircraft engines overhead. “It started about 45 minutes ago maybe. I’ve seen five plane drops now and more by the helicopters. This is just like you see it on TV.”
Just then Sierra Railroad security personnel in a specially-fitted pickup drove down nearby tracks at a decent clip, heading towards one smokey pocket of the blaze.
One of Carloss’ neighbors was preparing to evacuate. Further out Bell Mooney Road, several deputies were going property-to-property in their vehicles to alert residents and motorists to the dangers.
The fire was initially reported by Cal Fire at one acre in size and moving at a slow rate about 2:30 p.m. Forty minutes later it had grown to an estimated 30 acres.
Firefighters on the ground in wildland gear and in at least one bulldozer faced temperatures of at least 100 degrees Fahrenheit west of Jamestown on Thursday afternoon, not counting radiant heat from the flames they approached.
Agencies on the fire included Cal Fire, the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office,
CHP Sonora, Tuolumne County Fire, Murphys Fire Protection District, Mi Wuk Sugar Pine Fire Protection District, Twain Harte Fire/Rescue, Caltrans, and Pacific Gas and Electric Co.
Contact Guy McCarthy at gmccarthy@uniondemocrat.net or (209) 770-0405. Follow him on Twitter at @GuyMcCarthy.